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The Amencaq Rapids by Moonlight, 



THE NIAGARA BOOK 



A COMPLETE SOUVENIR OF NIAGARA FALLS 



CONTAINING SKETCHES, STORIES AND ESSAYS DESCRIP- 
TIVE, HUMOROUS, HISTORICAL AND SCIENTIFIC, 

WRITTEN EXCLUSIVELY FOR THIS BOOK, 



BY 



W. D. HOWELLS, MARK TWAIN, 
PROF. NATHANIEL S. SHALER, AND OTHERS. 



FULL V ILL USTRA TED B V HARR Y FENN 

JUN 27 ^8S2 



BUFFALO '^^-t^. 

UNDERHILL AND NICHOLS 
1893 



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COPYRIGHT 1893 
BY UNDERHILL & NICHOLS 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



THE WENBORNE-SUMNER CO. PRESS, 
BUFFALO, N. Y. 



preface. 



The lack of a good souvenir of Niagara Falls has 
often been noted by visitors at the great cataract. The 
editors and publishers of this volume have endeavored, 
by securing the co-operation of the most prominent 
literary men in America, to supply such a need. By 
following an idea of their own they have persuaded 
representative men in their lines to write for the book 
original stories, sketches and essays — descriptive, hu- 
morous, historical and scientific — dealing directly 
with Niagara Falls. One of the greatest artists in the 
country has prepared the water-color sketches and the 
novel drawings from which the illustration plates are 
made, and the publishers confidently trust that the 
entire volume will appeal to all the world by reason 
of its completeness. That this is America's greatest 
anniversary year lends special relevance to the pubHca- 
tion of such a book. 

Buffalo, N. Y., June i, 1893. 



CONTENTS 



Preface 

Niagara, First and Last ----... i 

BY W. D. HOWELLS. 

What To See ^28 

BY Frederic Almy. 

The Geology of Niagara Falls - . - - 65 
BY Prof. N. S. Shaler. 

The First Authentic Mention of Niagara Falls 93 
BY Mark Twain. 

Famous Visitors at Niagara Falls - . no 

BY Thomas R. Slicer. 

Historic Niagara _ . _ _ ^ . . 140 

BY Peter A. Porter. 

The Flora and Fauna of Niagara Falls - - 170 
BY David F. Day. 

As It Rushes By - 186 

by Edward S. Martin. 

The Utilization of Niagara's Power ..... 193 
BY Coleman Sellers, E. D. 

The Hydraulic Canal -._.-- 221 

BY W. C. Johnson. 



ILLUSTRATIONS, 



The American Rapids by Moonlight - - Frontispiece. 

A Bit of the American Falls from below see page 

THE Cave of the Winds — Summer - i6 

A Bit of the American Falls from below 

the Cave of the Winds — Winter. - - 34 

The Horse Shoe Falls from the Three 
Sisters — The Duffekin Islands in the 
Distance. - 46 

A Bird's-Eye View of Niagara River - 64 

A Map of the Hydrography at a Date 
Before the Melting of the Great 
Glacier -_._.- _ 70 

A Map of the Hydrography at a Date 
After the Melting of the Great 
Glacier ------- 74 

A Map of Lake Iroquois - . . _ 'j-j 

Niagara Falls, Showing the Hard and 

Soft Strata 83 

A Bird's-Eye View of the Niagara River 

Gorge 88 

(The six illustrations on pages 64, 70, 74, T], 83, 88 are re- 
printed from Gilbert's report of the New York State Reser- 
vation). 



The Horse Shoe Falls from Goat Is- see page 

LAND ------- - 98 

The Whirlpool Rapids with the Canti- 
lever Bridge above - - _ - 128 

A Map of the Niagara River — Showing 

Points of Historic Interest - - 154 

Niagara Falls— From an old drawing by 

Father Hennepin 169 

Looking Towards the Three Sisters from 

Canada ------- 174 

The Inlet Canal and Niagara River - 197 

The Interior of the Tunnel . - - 202 
Transverse Sketch, Showing Inlet from 

Main Canal - - - - - - 206 

The Discharge Portal - . . - . 215 

The half-tone illustrations and decorative headings for all the 
articles are reproduced from original sketches by Harry Fenn. 











r 

N the spring of i860 I wrote a life of Lincoln. It 
was what is called a campaign life, and in its 
poor way it was a part of the electioneering enginery 
of a canvass destined to be, if not the most memorable 
in our history, at least of the farthest effect. To be 
quite honest, I must own that my book, as I now 
look back on the facts, probably served the mysterious 
uses, and performed the vague offices of a fifth wheel 
to a coach, in forwarding the fortunes of the man 
whose life it celebrated before he was so famous as to 
need no blare of trumpets, not to say willow whistles, 
evermore. What seems strange is that the great re- 
nown of^ Lincoln has not reacted upon one of his 
earliest biographies; that this has dropped as wholly 
in oblivion as if it was the story of nobody; the 
coach indeed arriyed in glory, and was found to be 
the car of victory, the fiery chariot of freedom; but 
the fifth wheel seems to have stopped somewhere on 
the way. 



2 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

My book was published in Columbus, Ohio, and 
I did not wait for its assured success before setting forth 
upon some travels which had long invited me. The 
publisher had so much faith in it as to be willing to sup- 
ply me in advance with a certain sum of money, say fifty 
dollars in Ohio money, and a letter of credit, addressed 
to several publishers in Boston and New York, to the 
amount of some hundred and ninety dollars more. 
I meant to explore those distant capitals, and to take 
in the wonders and delights of the St. Lawrence route 
to Quebec, and to acquaint myself with the manners 
and customs of strange peoples, so far as they were to 
be studied in Canada. For this journey, a great deal 
of money was needed, and I took all I had. I do not 
know why I should have thought it well to spend my 
whole substance upon this venture, but I seem to have 
done so; and I had no compunctions, so far as I can re- 
member, in spending so much of this vast sum in Ohio 
money, which I then believed the best money in the 
world. I found later that it was worth only eighty- 
five or ninety cents on the dollar in Boston; one 
was liable to these surprises in the days of State bank- 
ing; but as yet I was troubled with no misgivings 
when I left Columbus, and took my way to Buffalo, 
where I thought I might fitly rest a day or two, and 
recruit my strength for the impression of Niagara 
which I was eager to receive. I spent most of this 
stay in my room at the hotel, writing letters for a 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 3 

Cincinnati paper, which had agreed to take them from 
me. The passion for summer correspondence has 
not yet died out of journalism, but even then I found 
its impulses uncertain, and many of the letters I 
wrote on that journey were never printed. I am 
not sure that this was a loss to literature; but it 
certainly was a loss to me in that Ohio money which 
was the best in the world. When I was not writing, 
I was wandering about the streets of Buffalo, and 
viewing its monuments from the platform of a horse car, 
or from its pavements, not so much crowded then as 
now. I forget what the monuments were in that day; 
I even forget who were the editors of the papers, 
whom I visited after the simple journalistic usage of 
the time, and conversed with, in their offices. But they 
probably had their revenge, and forgot who I was 
much sooner. I recall, however, that it was all very 
stirring and interesting, and that I tried to view the 
novelties I found everywhere in the manner of my 
favorite authors, and to describe them in their style. 
The chief of these authors was then Heinrich Heine, 
and I did my best to give such an account of Buffalo 
as he would have written in English if he had been 
there in my place. As soon as I had completed the 
history of my observations, which was more con- 
siderable than the observations themselves, I pushed 
on to Niagara Falls. 



4 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

II. 

One always experiences a vivid emotion from the 
sight of the Rapids, no matter how often one sees them, 
but I am safe in saying that one sees them for the first 
time but once. After that one has the feeling of a 
habitue towards them, a sort of friendly and familiar 
appreciation of their terrific beauty, but certainly not 
the thrill af the pristine awe. It is even hard to recall 
that: the picture remains , but not the sense of their mighty 
march, or of their gigantic leaps and lunges, when they 
break ranks ,' and their procession becomes a mere onward 
tumult without form or order. I had schooled myself 
for great impressions, and I did not mean to lose one 
of them; they were all going into that correspondence 
which I was so proud to be writing, and finally, I hoped, 
they were going into literature: poems, sketches, studies, 
and I do not know what all. But I had not counted 
upon the Rapids taking me by the throat, as it were, 
and making my heart stop. I still think that above 
and below the Falls, the Rapids are the most strik- 
ing features of the spectacle. At least you may 
say something about them, compare them to some- 
thing; when you come to the cataract itself, you can say 
nothing; it is incomparable. My sense of it first, and 
my sense'of it last, was not a sense of the stupendous, 
but a sense of beauty, of serenity, of repose. I have 
always had to take myself in hand, to shake myself up, 
to look twice, and recur to what I have heard and read 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 5 

of other people's impressions, before I am overpowered 
by it. Otherwise I am simply charmed. 

I hurried out to look at it as soon as they gave me 
a room in the good old Cataract House, and I spent 
the afternoon in taking a careful account of my impres- 
sions, and trying to fit phrases to my emotions for that 
blessed correspondence. Then I went back to my room 
and began to put them down on paper while they were 
still warm. 

That pleasant room in the Cataract House is very 
vivid in my memory yet. It had a green lattice-door 
opening into the corridor, and when I left the inner 
door ajar, a delicious current of summer breeze and 
afternoon sunshine drew through it from the window 
looking out on a sweep of those Rapids. It was what 
they call a single room, but it seemed very spacious at 
that time, and it had a little table in it, where I wrote 
my letters to the Cincinnati paper. I lived two weeks 
in that room, and I made a vast deal of copy, including 
some poems, I believe, which never got printed, any 
more than most of my letters, though I did not confine 
the test of their merit to one editor alone. 

III. 

Apart from these literary enterprises of mine there 
was not a great deal to occupy me in the hotel. I sup- 
pose there are moments when the hotels at Niagara are 
full, but I never happened there at those moments, and 



6 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

the Cataract House at the time of my first visit was 
far from crowded, though it was in the days before the 
war when Southerners were reputed to visit the Falls 
in great numbers. We dined at mid-day to the music 
of a brass band, which must have been more than 
usually brazen, to ha^e affected my nerves the way it 
did, for at twenty -three the nerves are not sensitive. 
Very likely there were a variety of brides and grooms 
there, but I did not know them from the rest : so 
little is one condition of life able to distinguish another. 
There was a period when these young couples were 
visible to me, afterwards ; and then, when I was very 
much older, they vanished again, and were no more 
to be found by the eye of earlier age than by the eye of 
earlier youth. I believe I saw numbers of pretty 
young girls, who then appeared to me stately and 
mature women, of great splendor and beauty, and of 
varying measures of haughty inapproachability. I 
made the acquaintance of no one in the hotel, but by 
a sort of afifinition, which I should now be at a loss to 
account for, I fell in with two artists who were paint- 
ing the Falls and the Rapids, and the scenery gener- 
ally, and I used to go about with them, and watch 
them at their work. They were brothers, and very 
friendly fellows, not much older than I, and because I 
liked them, and was reaching out in every direction 
for the materials of greater and greater consciousness, 
I tried to see Niagara as actively and pervasively 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. J 

iridescent as they did. They invited me to criticise 
their pictures in the presence of the facts, and I did 
once intimate that I failed to find all those rainbows, 
of different sizes and shapes which they had repre- 
sented on the surface of the water everywhere. Then 
they pointed the rainbows out with their forefingers 
and asked. Didn't I see them there, and there, and 
there ? I looked very hard, and as I was not going 
to be outdone in the perception of beauty, I said that 
I did see them, and I tried to believe that I saw 
them, but Heaven knows I never did. I hope this 
fraud will not be finally accounted against me. Those 
were charming fellows, and other pictures of theirs I 
have found so faithful that I am still a little shaken 
about the rainbows. My artists were from Ohio, and 
though I was too ignorant then to affirm that Ohio 
art was the best art in the world, just as Ohio money 
was the best, still I was very proud of it, and I suppose 
I renowned those invisible iridescences in my_letter to 
the Cincinnati paper. 

We walked all about the Falls, and over Goat 
Island, and to and from the Whirlpool, and it was a 
great advantage to me to be in the artists' company, for 
they knew all the loveliest places, and could show me 
the best points of view. I drove nowhere, because I 
had a fear, bred of much newspaper rumor and humor, 
that my accumulated treasures would not hold out 
against the rapacity of a single Niagara hackman. A 



8 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

dollar was a dollar in those days, especially if it were 
a dollar of Ohio money, or at least it was so till you 
got to Boston ; and I was not willing to waste any of 
mine in carriage fares. But to be honest about those 
poor fellows, I always found the Niagara hackmen, 
when I visited their domain in after years, not only 
civil but reasonable, and I have never regretted the 
money I spent upon them ; it was no longer Ohio 
money, to be sure. 

Some places I could not walk to on that first visit, 
and as there was no suspension bridge then near the 
Falls, I took a boat when I wished to cross to the 
Canada side, and a man rowed me over the eddies of 
the river where they reeled away from the plunge of 
the cataract. I do not think I crossed more than once, 
or had any wish to do so, after I had visited the battle 
field of Lundy's Lane, where a veteran of the fight, 
so well preserved in alcohol that I should not be sur- 
prised if he were there yet, gave me an account of it 
from the top of a tower in which he seemed to be 
fortified. That poor little carnage has shrunken into 
so small a horror since the battles of the great war, 
then impending, that I feel somewhat like excusing the 
mention of it now; but when I visited the scene in 
1 860, I was aware of several emotions which, if not of 
prime importance on the spot, were very capable of 
being worked up into something worth while in my 
letter to the Cincinnati paper. I tried to give them a 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 9 

Heinesque cast, and I made a good deal of the tipsy- 
veteran. In the course of a literary life one is obliged 
to practice these economies, and I advise the beginner 
in our art against throwing away anything whatever. 
But what is the need of advising him ? He would not 
be able to do so if he wished. He belongs to what he 
has seen, as much as it belongs to him, and he owes 
it a debt of expression which will weigh upon him 
till he complies with its just demand. The trouble is 
with what he has not seen, and decidedly he had 
better not be advised against throwing that away. 
The more of that he throws away the better; and the 
reader can have very little notion how much he is 
profiting by my profusion in this respect. 

IV. 

Really, however, I did see a great many things at 
Niagara on that first visit, and I am sorry to say that 
I saw them chiefly on the Canada side. My patriot- 
ism has always felt the hurt of the fact that our great 
national cataract is best viewed from a foreign shore. 
There can be no denying, at least in a confidence like 
the present, that the Canadian Fall, if aot more ma- 
jestic is certainly more massive, than the American. 
I used to watch its mighty wall of waters with a jealousy 
almost as green as themselves, and then try to believe 
that the knotted tumble of our Fall was finer. I could 
only make out that it had more apparent movement. 



lO NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

But at times, and if one looked steadily at any part of 
the cataract, the descending floods seemed to hang in 
arrest above the gulfs below. Those liquid steeps, 
those precipices of molten emerald, all broken and 
fissured with opal and crystal, seemed like heights 
of sure and firmset earth, and the mists that climbed 
them half-way were as still to the eye in their subtler 
sort. This effect of immobility is what gives its 
supreme beauty to Niagara, its repose. If there is 
agony there, it is the agony of Niobe, of the Laocoon. 
It moves the beholder, but itself it does not move. 

I spent a great deal of time trying to say this or 
something like it, which now and always seemed to 
me true of Niagara, though I do not insist that it shall 
seem so to others. I could not see those iridescences 
that everywhere illumined the waters to my artist 
friends, and very likely the reader, if he is a person 
of feeble fancy, small sympathy and indifferent 
morals, will find nothing of this Repose that I speak 
of in Niagara. I imagine him taking my page out 
into the presence of the fact, and demanding. Now 
where is the Repose ? 

Well, all that I can say is that it has always been 
there on the occasion of my visits. On the occasion 
of my first visit there was even a shelf of the Table 
Rock still there, and I went out and stood upon it, for 
the sake of saying that I had done so in my letter to the 
Cincinnati paper, though I might very well have said 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. I I 

it without having done so, and I am almost sorry that 
I did not, when I remember how few of those letters 
that paper printed. There was no great pleasure in 
the experience. You were supposed to get a particu- 
larly fine view of the Horseshoe Falls, but I got no 
view at all, on account of a whim of the mist. 
Weeks earlier a large piece of the rock had fallen just a 
few moments after a carriage full of people had driven 
off it, and I did not know but another piece might fall 
just a few moments before I walked off it. I was not 
in a carriage, and my portion of Table Rock did not 
fall till some three months later ; that was quite soon 
enough for me ; I should have preferred three years. 
I do not know whether it was my satisfaction in 
this hair-breadth escape or not, but I had sufficient 
spirits immediately after to join a group of people near 
by who were taking peeps over a precipice at some- 
thing below. I did not know what it was, but I 
thought it might be something I could work up in my 
letters to that Cincinnati paper, and I waited my turn 
among those who were lying successively on their 
stomachs and craning their necks over the edge; and 
then I saw that it was a man who was lying face up- 
wards on the rocks below, and had perhaps been lying 
there some time. He was a very green and yellow 
melancholy of a man, as to his face, and in his 
workman's blue overalls he had a trick of swimming up- 
wards to the eye of the aesthetic spectator, so that one 



12 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

had to push back with a hard clutch on the turf to 
keep from plunging over to meet him. I made a note 
of this morbid impulse for primary use in my letters to 
that Cincinnati paper, and secondary use in a poem, or 
sketch, or tale; and then I crawled back and went 
away, and was faint in secret for a while. It was 
strange how fully sufficing one little glimpse of that 
poor man was. No one knew who he was or how he 
had fallen over there, but after the first glance at him 
(I believe I did not give a second) I felt that we did 
not part strangers. Now I meet people at dinner and 
pass whole evenings with them, and cannot remember 
their faces so as to place them the next week. But I 
think I could have placed that poor man years after- 
wards. To be sure the circumstances are different, 
and I am no longer twenty -three. 

V. 

Do they still, I wonder, take people to see a place 
not far above the Canadian Fall, where a vein of natural 
gas vents itself amid the trouble of the waters, and the 
custodian sets fire to it with a piece of lighted news- 
paper ? They used to do that, if you paid them a 
quarter, in a little pavilion built over the place to shut 
out the unpaying public. By comparison with the 
great gas wells which I saw in combustion long after 
at Findlay, this was a very feeble rush light con- 
flagration indeed, but it had the merit of bein^ 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 1 3 

much more mysterious. I, for instance, did not know 
it was natural gas, or what it was, and the custodian 
sagely would not say ; the mystery was probably part 
of his stock in trade. There were many mysteries, 
maintained at a profit, about Niagara then, and not 
the least of them was the Terrapin Tower, which stood 
at the brink of the American Fall, and was reached by 
a series of stepping stones and bridges amidst the rapids. 
The mystery of this was that any human being should 
wish to go up it, at the risk of his life, but everybody did. 
I myself found a bridal couple (of the third espousals) 
in it when I ventured a vast deal of potential literature 
in its frail keeping ; no terrapin, I fancy, was ever so 
rash as to ascend it, from the day it was built to the 
day it was taken away. What is so amusing now to 
think of, though not so amusing then, is that all the 
while I was clambering about those heights and brinks, 
I was suffering from an inveterate vertigo, which made 
plain ground rather difficult for me at times. At odd 
moments it became necessary for me to lay hold of 
something and stay the reeling world; and the recur- 
rence of these exigences finally decided me against 
venturing into the Cave of the Winds. Upon the whole 
I am glad I did not penetrate it, for now I can think it 
what I like, and if I had seen it I probably could not 
do that. I compromised by descending the Biddle 
Stairs, which had a rail to hold on by, and which, I 
have no doubt, amount to much the same thing as the 



14 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

Cave of the Winds. At any rate, when I got to the 
bottom of them, I wondered why in the world I had 
come down. 

I do not know whether under the present social- 
istic regime, or state control, of the Falls, there are so 
many marvels shown as under the old system of 
private enterprise. But I am sure that their number 
could have been greatly reduced, with advantage to 
the visitor. If you find a marvel advertised, and you 
learn that you cannot see it without paying a quarter, 
every coin upon your person begins to burn in an 
intense sympathy with your curiosity, and you cannot 
be content till you have seen that marvel. This was 
the principle of human nature upon which private 
capital had counted, and it did not matter that the 
Falls themselves were enough to glut the utmost 
greed of wonder. Their prodigious character was 
eked out by every factitious device to which the penalty 
of twenty-five cents could be attached. I remember 
that at the entrance of Prospect Park, if not within the 
sacred grove, a hardy adventurer had pitched his tent 
and announced the presence of a five-legged calf 
within its canvas walls, in active competition with the 
great cataract. I paid my quarter (my Ohio money 
was all paper, or I might have thought twice about 
it,) in order to make sure that this calf was in no wise 
comparable to Niagara. I do not say that the picture 
of the calf on the outside of the tent was not as good 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. I 5 

as some pictures of Niagara that I have seen. It was 
at least as much like. 

I hope that all this is not decrying the attractions 
of any worthy adjunct of the cataract, such as the 
Whirlpool. There is of course no other such, and I 
was proud and glad to believe that the Whirlpool was 
chiefly on the American side, or the first part of it, or 
was at first nearly if not solely accessible from our 
territory ; and I did not find out till long after that I 
was wrong. The Whirlpool, seen from the heights 
around it, has that effect of sculpturesque repose 
which I have always found the finest thing in the 
Cataract itself. Like that it is impassioned, while the 
Rapids are passionate. From the top the circling 
lines of the Whirlpool seemed graven in a level of 
chalcedony ; the illusion of arrest was so perfect that I 
was almost sorry ever to have lost it, though I do not 
know what I could have done with it if I had kept it. 
I duly studied my phrases about it for my letters to that 
Cincinnati paper, and it is probably from some of them, 
printed or unprinted, that I speak now. These things 
linger long in the mind ; and it is not always from 
frugality that the observer of the picturesque uses the 
same terms again and again. Happily, I am not 
obliged to describe the Whirlpool to the reader, as I 
was then, and I have no impression to impart except 
this sense of its worthy unity with the Cataract in what 
I may call its highest aesthetic quality, its repose. 



1 6 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

VI. 

If he does not believe in this, he may go and look ; 
but there is one fact of this first visit of mine to Niag- 
ara which he must helplessly take my word for. That 
fact is Blondin, who is closely allied in my mind with 
the Whirlpool, because I saw him cross the river 
above the frantic Rapids not far from it. If this asso- 
ciation is too mechanical, too material, then I will go 
farther, and say fhat when Blondin had got such a 
distance into the danger, he, too, became an illusion 
of Repose ; and I defy the most skeptical reader, who 
was not then present, to gainsay me. 

Why those rapids just below the large Suspension 
Bridge were chosen to stretch Blondin 's cable over, I 
do not know, unless it was because the river narrows 
to a gorge there, and because those rapids are more 
horrid, in the eighteenth-century sense, than any other 
feature of Niagara. They have been a great deal ex- 
ploited since Blondin 's time by adventurers who have 
attempted to swim them, and to navigate them in bar- 
rels and buoys and India-rubber balls, or if not quite 
India-rubber balls, I do not know why. But at that 
time no craft but the Maid-of-the-Mist, the little steam- 
boat which used to run up to the foot of the cataract, 
had ever dared them. She, indeed, flying from the 
perennial pun involved in her name, not to mention the 
Sheriff's officer who had an attachment for her, 
weathered the rapids and passed in and out of the 



AM 







A bit of Americari Falls from below the Cave of t^e Winds— Summer, 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 1 7 

Whirlpool, and escaped into the quiet of Canadian 
waters, with the pilot and her engineer on board. 
Afterwards I saw her at Quebec where she had 
changed her name, as other American refugees in 
Canada have done, and had now become the Maid-of- 
Orleans, in recognition of her peaceful employ of car- 
rying people to and from the Isle of Orleans. . But 
her adventurous voyage was still fresh on the lips 
of guides and hackmen when I was first at Niagara, 
and I looked at the Rapids and the Whirlpool with an 
interest peculiarly fearful because of it. 

As usual, I walked to the scene of the exploit I 
was about to witness, but there were a good many 
people walking, and they debated on the way whether 
Blondin would cross that day or not. It had been 
raining over night, and some said his cable was not in 
condition ; others, that the guys which stayed it on 
either side were too slack, or too taut from the wet. 
Nevertheless, we found a great crowd on the Canada 
shore, which seemed to command the best view of 
Blondin as well as Niagara, and the American shore 
was dense with spectators, too. As the hour drew 
near for Blondin to do his feat, we were lost in greater 
and greater doubt whether he would do it or not, and 
perhaps if a vote had been taken the skeptics would 
have carried the day, when he suddenly danced out 
upon the cable before our unbeHeving eyes. 

The dizzy path was of the bigness of a ship's cable, 



1 8 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

at the shore, but it seemed to dwindle to a thread 
where it sank over the centre of the gulf, down toward 
those tusked and frothing breakers. They seemed to 
jump at it, like a pack of maddened wolves, and to pull 
one another back, and then to tumble and flow away, 
forever different, forever the same. The strong guys 
starting from the rocks of the precipice and the level of 
the rapids could stay it, after all, only a little part of its 
length, and beneath them and up through them, the 
black cedars thrust their speary tops, with that slant 
toward the middle of the gorge, which must be from 
the pull of the strong draft between its walls. They 
made a fine contrast of color with the floods breaking 
snowy white from their bulks of glassy green; and for 
the rest there was the perfect blue of the summer 
heaven over all. 

There was no testing of the guys, whether they were 
slack or taut, or of the cable, whether it was in condi- 
tion, and in fact no one thought of either, such was the 
surprise of seeing that pink figure of a man spring out 
into space from some source which I, at least, had not 
observed. He was in the conventional silk fleshings 
of the rope-dancer, and he carried a very long balanc- 
ing pole. At first there was some reality in the appa- 
rition. One felt he was a fellow-man about to dare 
death for our amusement, but as he began to run down 
the slope of the cable toward the centre, one rapidly 
lost this sense, and beheld him as a mere feature of the 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 1 9 

general prospect. Perhaps he was aware of this effect 
and chose to startle us back to our consciousness of 
his humanity, or perhaps it was a wonted trick, in- 
tended to heighten the interest of the spectacle. At 
any rate, in the very middle of the river, he seemed 
suddenly to falter, and he swayed from side to side as 
if he were going to fall. A sort of groan went through 
the crowd, and several women fainted. Then Blondin 
made believe to recover himself, and began to climb 
the slope of his cable to the further shore. I do not 
know just how far this was, but I think it may have 
been well on to half a mile ; as to the height above the 
rapids where the cable hung it looked like a hundred 
and fifty feet. I made some vague note of these mat- 
ters after Blondin vanished into the crowd beyond, but 
there was not much time for conjecture. He came 
into sight again almost at once, a little puppet, running 
down the farther slope of the cable, and growing a 
little and a little larger as he drew near. Presently one 
noticed that he had left his balancing pole behind, and 
was tripping forward with outstretched arms. 

I stood where I could see him well, on his return, 
and I looked at him with something of the interest one 
might feel in a man who had come back from the dead 
and had put on his earthly personality again. I do 
not remember his face, which was no doubt as good or 
as bad a face as any mountebank's or monarch's, but 
his feet seemed to me the very most intelligent feet in 



20 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

the world, pliable, sinuous, clinging, educated in every 
fibre, and full of spiritual sentience. They had the air 
of knowing that the whole man was trusted to them, 
and, such as he was, that he was in their power and 
keeping alone. They rose and fell upon the cable with 
an exquisite accuracy, and a delicate confidence which 
had nothing foolhardy in it. Blondin's head might 
take risks, but it was clear that Blondin's feet took 
none ; whatever they did they did wittingly, and with a 
fall forecast of the chances and consequences. They 
were imaginably such feet as Isaac Taylor conjectures 
we may have in another life, where the intellect shall 
not be seated in the brain alone, but shall be issued to 
every part of the body, and present in every joint and 
limb. 

They were an immense consolation to me, those 
feet, and when Blondin went tripping gayly out upon 
them over his rope again, I breathed much more freely 
than I had before ; they had, as it were, personally re- 
assured me, and given me their honor that nothing 
should happen to him ; those feet and I had a sort of 
common understanding about him, and I do not think 
they respected him any more than I did for risking his 
life in that manner. He went down the rope and up 
the rope, dwindling from a pink man to a pink puppet as 
before, and going to nothing in the crowd. Then he 
came to something once more, and began to grow from 
a puppet into a man again, but with something odd 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 21 

about him. He had resumed his balancing pole, and 
he had something strange on his feet, those wise feet, 
and, as he drew nearer, we could see that he had wooden 
buckets on them, of about the bigness of butter firkins; I 
tell it, not expecting much to be believed, for I did not 
believe it when I saw it. But till he arrived, I could say 
to myself that there were no bottoms in those buckets, 
and that his sagacious feet, though somewhat impeded, 
had still no doubt a good chance to save him, if he lost 
his head, and would be equal to any common emer- 
gency. That was the opinion of everyone about me, 
and though I knew how vexed with him the feet must 
be, I did not wholly lose patience till I was told by one 
who saw the buckets after Blondin stepped out of them, 
that they had wooden bottoms like any other butter 
firkins. Then I was glad that I did not see his feet 
again, for I could imagine the look of cold disgust, the 
look of haughty injury they must wear at having been 
made privy to such a mere brutal audacity 

The man himself looked cool and fresh enough, 
but I, who was not used to such violent fatigues as he 
must have undergone in these three transits, was bathed 
in a cold perspiration, and so weak and worn with 
making them in sympathy that I could scarcely walk 
away. 

Long afterwards I was telling about this experi- 
ence of mine — it was really more mine than Blondin 's 
— in the neat shop of a Venetian pharmacist, to a select 



22 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

circle of the physicians who wait in such places in 
Venice for the call of their patients. One of these 
civilized men, for all comment, asked : ** Where was 
the government?" and I answered in my barbarous 
pride of our individualism, " The government had 
nothing to do with it. In America the government 
has nothing to do with such things." 

But now I think that this Venetian was right, and 
that such a show as I have tried to describe, ought no 
more to have been permitted than the fight of a man 
with a wild beast. It was an offence to morality, and 
it thinned the frail barrier which the aspiration of 
centuries has slowly erected between humanity and 
savagery. But for the time being I made no such 
reflections. I got back to my hotel and hastened to 
send off a whole letter about Blondin to that Cincin- 
nati paper ; and to this day I do not know whether 
they ever printed it or not. I try to make fun of it now, 
but it was not funny then. All the way round on 
that tour, my view of the wonders of nature and the 
monuments of man was obscured by my anxiety 
concerning the letters I wrote to that Cincinnati paper; 
and at all the hotels where I stopped I hurried to 
examine the files of the reading-room and see whether it 
had kept faith with me or not. Across many years, 
across graves not a few, I can reach and recall the hurt 
vanity, the just resentment, and the baffled hope, that 
were bound up in that early experience of editorial frailty. 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 23 

VIL 

My first visit to Niagara was paid in the midsum- 
mer of the year, and the midsummer of my life. All 
nature was rich and beautifully alive amid scenes which 
T think are of her noblest. There were places where 
the fresh scent of the waters was mixed with the 
fragrance of wild flowers ; the birds which sang inaudi- 
bly in the immediate roar of the cataract, made them- 
selves sweetly heard in the heart of Goat Island. 
Everywhere there were pretty young girls, in the hats 
which they were then beginning to wear after a long 
regime of bonnets, and their hats had black plumes in 
them that drooped down as near to the cheeks of the 
pretty young girls as they could get. 

I can scarcely help heaving a sigh for the wrinkles 
in those cheeks which the plumes, if they still drooped 
instead of sticking militantly up on the front and back of 
the hats, would not be so eager to caress now ; but I 
will not insist a great deal upon a sort of sigh which 
has been often known in print already. I think it much 
more profitable to note that all the entourage of 
Niagara was then private property, and was put to 
those money-making uses at the expense of the public 
which form one of the holiest attributes of that sacred 
thing. I never greatly objected to the paper-mills on 
Goat Island ; they were impertinent to the scenery, of 
course, but they were picturesque, with their low- 
lying, weather-worn masses in the shelter of the forest 



24 NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 

trees, beside the brawling waters. But nearly every 
other assertion of private rights in the landscape was an 
outrage to it. I will not even try to recall the stupid 
and squalid contrivances which defaced it at every 
point, and extorted a coin from the insulted traveler at 
every turn. They are all gone now, and in the keep- 
ing of the State the whole redeemed and disenthralled 
vicinity of Niagara is an object-lesson in what public 
ownership, whenever it comes, does for beauty. 

I had the eagerness of a true believer to see this 
result, and even before I went to look at the cataract 
on my last visit a winter ago, I drove about and made 
sure from the liberated landscape that the people were 
in possession of their own. It was wonderful, even in 
mid-winter, the difference in dignity and prosperity that 
not so much appeared as seemed to reappear, and to 
find in the beholder's consciousness a sense of what 
that divine prospect must have been when the eye of 
the white man first gazed upon it. The landscape had 
got back something of its youth, and in my joy in it, 
I got back something of mine. 

I do not say that I got much. At fifty, one is at 
least not twice as young as at twenty-five. But I 
was very fairly young again when I came to Niagara 
in the mid-winter of my mid-winter year, and I was 
certainly as impatient as I could have been quarter of 
a century earlier to see the ice-bridge below the Falls 
and the ice-cone that their breath had formed ; in fact, 



I 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 25 

I had waited a good deal longer to see them. Shall 
I own that at first sight these were a disappointment ? 
At first sight the Falls themselves are a disappointment, 
for we come to them with something other than the 
image of their grand and simple adequacy in our 
minds, and seek to match them with that distempered 
invention of the ignorant fancy. I had supposed 
the ice-cone was a sharp peak, jutting up in front of 
the cataract, not reflecting that it must be what 
it always is, a rounded knoll, built up finely, finely, 
slowly, slowly, out of the spectral shapes of mist, 
seized by the frost and flung down upon the frozen 
river. When you remember that this ice-cone is 
formed of the innumerable falls of these ghosts, I think 
one ought to be content with the Romanesque dome- 
shape of the mound, however Gothic one's expecta- 
tion may have been. I do not deny that I should still 
prefer the pinnacle, but that is because I prefer Gothic 
architecture ; and I advise the reader not to hope for 
it. If he has a pleasure in delicate decoration, the 
closely stippled slopes of the ice-cone will give it to 
him ; it is like that fine jeweler's work on the grain of 
dead gold where the whole surface is fretted with in- 
finitesimal points. When these catch the sun of such 
a blue mid-winter sky as lifted its speckless arch above 
the ice-cone on the day I saw it, the effect is all that 
one has a right to ask of mere nature. I am trying to 
hint that I would have built the ice-cone somewhat 
differently, if it had been left to me, but that I am not 



26 NIAGARA. FIRST AND LAST. 

hypercritical. If it seems a little low, a little lump- 
ish in the retrospect; still it had its great qualities, 
which I should be the last in refusing to recognize. 

The name ice-bridge had deceived me, but the ice- 
bridge did not finally disappoint me. It is not a bridge 
at all. It is the channel of the river blocked as far as 
the eye can see down the gorge with huge squares 
and oblongs of ice, or of frozen snow, as they seem, 
and giving a realizing effect to all the remembered pic- 
tures of arctic scenery. This was curiously heightened 
by some people with sleds among the crowds, making 
their way through the ice pack from shore to shore; there 
wanted only the fierce dash of some Esquimaux dog- 
team and the impression would have been perfect. It 
was best to look down upon it all from the cliffs, when 
at times the effect was more than arctic, when it was 
lunar : you could fancy yourself gazing upon the face 
of a dead world, or rather a plaster mask of it, with 
these small black figures of people crawling over it Hke 
flies. It was perfectly still that day, and in spite of 
the diapason of the Falls, an inner silence possessed 
the air. From the cliffs along the river the cedars 
thrust outward, armored in plates of ice, like the im- 
memorial effigies of old-time warriors, and every cas- 
cade that had flung its bannerol of mist to the summer 
air, was now furled to the face of the rock and frozen 
fast. Again a sense of the repose, which is the secret 
of Niagara's charm, filled me. 

There was repose even in the peculiar traffic of 



J 



NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 2/ 

Niagara when we penetrated to a shop devoted to the 
sale of its bric-a-brac for some photographs of the winter 
scenery, and we fancied a weird surprise and a certain 
statuesque reluctance in the dealer. But this may have 
been merely our fancy. I would insist only upon the 
mute immobility of the birds on the feather fans behind 
the glazed shelves, and a mystical remoteness in the 
Japanese objects mingled with the fabrics of our own 
Indians and the imported feldspar cups and vases. 

Our train went back to Buffalo through the early 
winter sunset, crimson and crimsoner over the rapids, 
and then purple over the ice where the river began to 
be frozen again. This color was so intense that the 
particles of ice along the brink were like a wilding 
growth of violets — those candied violets you see at the 
confectioner's. 






FRgDERlCVAUnY -5^3 
1. 





most greedy imagination need not 
remain long hungry at Niagara. A 
single well-used day, with a sun 
bright enough to start the rainbows, 
is enough to satisfy every expecta- 
|) tion. And yet, many who see the 
Falls for the first time are disap- 
pointed, even in the case of people qualified to enjoy 
their beauty. No one can question Mrs. Jameson's 
keen appreciation of the beautiful, at least in art, but 
this is her statement of her first impressions : '* I am 
no longer Anna, — I am metamorphosed, — I am trans- 
lated, — I am an ass's head, a clod, a wooden spoon, 
a fat weed growing on Lethe's bank, a stock, a stone, 
a petrification, — for have I not seen Niagara, the 
wonder of wonders; and felt — no words can tell what 
disappointment! " 

Many visitors have expressed the same feeling, as 
honestly if not so comically. There are various rea- 



WHAT TO SEE. 



29 



sons for so general an experience, but no one of them 
implies any short-coming in the place itself. For in- 
stance, a rather stolid mind takes in such a sight 
slowly. One look is not enough to quicken it. A 
more sensitive temperament, on the other hand, is 
sure to come to Niagara with such composite antici- 
pations that no single aspect of the place could satisfy 
them all. 

The first view of Niagara comes only once. If 
you care to have it the best possible, it is worth while 
to choose your approach as carefully as a chess player 
chooses his opening. The best first view from the top 
of the bank is on the Canadian side ; but if you have 
arrived by a railroad which leaves you on the Ameri- 
can shore it is almost equally good to cross the Suspen- 
sion Bridge and then walk up the other bank. You see 
the whole sweep of both Falls at once ; at the left the 
American Fall with its width of 1060 feet, then Goat 
Island, with 1300 feet more, and on the right the 
Horse Shoe with a curve of 3010 feet; in all, a total 
width of a full mile. The fault of this view is that the 
great width dwarfs the height and makes the Falls seem 
very low indeed. The American Fall is 167 feet high, 
the Horse Shoe 158; and yet the effect is of a long, low 
wall. 

The next best view from above, and the one gen- 
erally seen first by visitors, is from the brink at Pros- 
pect Park, but here the Falls are seen in profile, and 



30 WHAT TO SEE. 

the line of their length is, as it were, foreshortened. 
Moreover, from either of these two chief points of first 
observation the height of the Falls seems much less 
than when they are seen from below. It is better to 
insist on seeing Niagara first from its base. What we 
look down on never seems so great as what we must 
look up to. 

The weather and the season have their influence. 
A cloudy day will take away the rainbows, and on a 
chilly day you have to move along from spot to spot, 
and cannot loiter idly where you choose and live into 
the beauty of the place. 

If you are easily moved it may be that a tremor of 
excitement will take possession of your senses as you 
approach Niagara for the first time, and so subdue 
your judgment that you will have no power to criti- 
cise ; but, on the other hand, no matter how callous 
you may be, no matter how utter a Phihstine, it is 
possible for you to be so introduced that you will 
be made an instantaneous convert to the majesty 
of the place if not to its beauty. If you are willing 
to take the climax of Niagara at the outset and so 
forestall every possibility of disappointment, — man or 
woman, if you have the heart of a man, and the cour- 
age to lay it, at once, bare, against the great heart of 
Niagara, I advise you without the least preliminary 
glance of any kind to enter the watery chaos of the 
Cave of the Winds. 



WHAT TO SEE. 



31 



Cross the light bridge that leads to Goat Island, 
with the rapids of the American Fall slipping furiously 
under you as they fall from the sky line at the left ; 
with the brink itself a few rods below you on the 
right, so that you see the plunge, but not the fall ; 
with the roar of the torrent in your ears and the 
rank, musty smell of the roily water strong in your 
nostrils ; and finally, before you in the distance, rising 
over the tree tops of Goat Island, the pillar of cloud 
by day that guards the Horse Shoe. If it is very 
early morning in midsummer, and the wind is favora- 
ble, a rainbow, zenith high, will overarch the scene, but 
this is hardly needed to quicken the pulses of your 
heart as you advance to meet the wonder of your 
thoughts from early childhood. Take now the middle 
path across the idyllic beauty of the island. You find 
it a cool bower, sweet with every wood fragrance, car- 
peted in the spring with masses of blue violets and 
white trillium, and overspread by branches of huge 
trees, whose leaves sift out the sunlight until it falls in 
patches only on the road below. It is a place in 
which to " loaf and invite the soul," as Whitman says, 
but now is not the time. Five minutes brings you to 
the dressing house that marks the entrance to the Cave 
of the Winds. Here it will take a strong will not to 
look down over the hand rail on the bank; but the 
epicure in sensations will refrain. Indeed, to look now 
is to spoil everything, and to accept for your first view 



32 



WHAT TO SEE. 



of Niagara one of the least imposing of all. Instead, 
step quickly into the house, pay your dollar for the 
necessary escort of a guide, strip clean to the skin with 
no thought of retaining even your underclothes, and 
put on the homely and uncomfortable, but eminently 
practical suit that is offered you. A blouse and trou- 
sers of a light gray flannel, a hooded coat and overalls 
of yellow oilskin, and slippers made out of a sheet of 
thick white felt folded around the foot and firmly tied 
in place with strips of whip-cord — arrayed in these you 
are like a Gloucester sea-captain in a squall, or Hke an 
Esquimau in oilskin. Now throw around your neck 
a string to which is tied the key that locks the chest in 
which you have placed your valuables, let the boy in 
attendance tie about your waist more whip-cord for a 
sash, and then, in full court costume, you are ready to 
be presented to Majesty. 

To reach the cave you circle down the cHff by an 
uncomfortable, small, winding staircase, of a sort 
familiar to sight-seers abroad. From this you presently 
emerge, out of breath, upon a ledge of rock, with 
the dark green waters of the river just below and a 
vertical wall of granite towering far above. Now, 
from above, the only way thoroughly to enjoy a preci- 
pice is to lie flat upon your face and peer over the edge 
downward. This is impracticable at Niagara; but 
from below the height is appreciated keenly as the eye 



WHAT TO SEE. 33 

toils upward along the face of the cliff in its effort to 
find a horizon. Figures seen at the sky-line appear 
one-half their actual size. 

A mere score of steps now brings you around a 
curve and puts before your sight the enormous sheet 
of water, vast in itself, but at Niagara insignificant and 
inconspicuous, which curtains the Cave of the Winds. 
About one hundred and fifty feet in height, and as 
much in breadth, it descends between Goat Island and 
Luna Island. It has no special name, and the ordi- 
nary visitor to Niagara will hardy realize its separate 
existence. - Our English cousins who do not go behind 
it may respect it more if they are told that it leaves 
the sky at the height of the top of the western towers 
of Canterbury or of Durham Cathedrals, and that it has 
twice the width of the main facade of either. If they 
have ever been behind they need no details to ensure 
respect. We see it first in profile, a long, curving edge 
of green and white, not so much falling from the brink 
above as leaping, with a forward plunge, so that be- 
tween its inner wall and the retreating surface of the 
cliff is left a strange gray cavern, now to be explored. 

I have been through the cave a score of times, 
but no number of trips can ever dull or in any degree 
displace in my mind the impressions of the first visit. 
In quiet ignorance of what was to come I approached 
the precipitous wooden stair-case which descends be- 



34 WHAT TO SEE. 

hind the fall. Looking across I saw a patch of blue 
sky at the farther outlet of the cave, but elsewhere all 
the air was dark with criss-crossed blasts of sleet, hurt- 
ling in all directions like frightened comets. A second 
later the battery of the fall was on my head and all the 
Powers of the Air were at my throat. Around my 
feet a rainbow formed a ring through which I seemed 
to drop into blackness. The staircase stopped and 
I was on a narrow ledge of rock, with no more path 
or rail, hugging myself against a slippery wall of 
stone. The water clutched my feet furiously. Neither 
the burly guide nor the stranger who had accom- 
panied me was to be seen. I started to go forward, 
but as I turned a mass of water struck me breathless. 
I tried to find the stairs, but a worse dash of water 
from the other side outdid the first. Facing the 
wall again I waited, perhaps thirty seconds, won- 
dering, when suddenly the guide appeared with the 
frightened Frenchman whom he had pursued to the 
top of the stairs, and there recaptured. It was a lone- 
some introduction to the place, but we moved on now 
together through the water, clinging desperately with 
our toes through the felt to whatever foothold we 
could discover, and glad to have the support of our 
hands as well as feet. Dignity in such a place, and 
such a costume, is the last thing to be con.6idered. 
Half blinded, quite deafened, gasping, — the agitation 
of the nerves is too great at first for observation ; but 




A bit of the American Falls fronri below the Cave of the Winds — Winter, 



WHAT TO SEE. 35 

soon the eye learns how to follow the curving" inner 
surface of the falling water, half translucent and of 
shifting colors, far up to where it leaves the line of the 
cliff above. It learns to overcome the twilight and 
gather outlines of black, terraced rocks, dripping with 
streams of sleet, that form the amphitheatre of the cave. 
You learn to step fearlessly into the churning water, 
towards the Fall, knowing that the rebound of the 
cataract is so violent that even if you lost your footing 
you would only be thrust roughly back against the 
terraces. It is soon over. A brief climb up the ledges 
brings you to dry rock and the bright sun again, but 
you have seen a cave of ^olus such as Virgil never 
dreamed of. Henceforth the lines in the opening pages 
of the ^neid : 

Hie vasto rex Mollis antro 
Luetantes ventos vine lis et earcere frenat^ 
will have new meaning. 

A clever writer lately said* that the cave was like a 
small choky corridor with the deluge going on inside 
it, and he marvelled greatly that the end of his trip co- 
incided with the point of departure and did not occur 
in transitu. In fact, like my French comrade, he ar- 
rived simultaneously at the entrance to the cave and 
the conclusion that he had had enough. Many 
men do the same, but hardly ever a woman, though 
women frequently go through the cave. It is alarm- 

* John J. a Becket, in Harper's Weekly for May 30, 1891. 



36 



WHAT TO SEE. 



ins^ but not dano-erous, and accidents are almost 
unheard of. 

There is no surer way to take the conceit out of a 
complacent cockney who affects to look down on 
Niagara than to make him run this gauntlet. 1 think 
always of Emerson's lines on Monadnoc : 

Pants up hither the spruce clerk 
From South Cove and City Wharf. 
I take him up my rugged sides, 
Half- repentant, scant of breath, — 

I scowl on him with my cloud, 
With my north wind chill his blood ; 
I lame him, clattering down the rocks ; 
And to live he is in fear. 
Then, at last, I let him down 
Once more into his dapper town, 
To chatter, frightened, to his clan 
And forget me if he can. 

The passage through the cave is an experience 
too grim and colorless for pure pleasure, but the return 
across the rocks in front of the fall — in a bright sun — 
is a luxury of delight. The heart that '' leaps up when 
it beholds a rainbow in the sky" will here be in a dancing 
fever of excitement, for there are whole rainbows, half 
rainbows and quarter rainbows, not in the sky, distant 
and inaccessible, but in your fingers, around your head 
and between your feet, while the pot of gold at the 
rainbow's foot is a caldron of molten silver, foamine 



WHAT TO SEE. 37 

and rushing about your knees, and tugging at you 
with an invitation that is irresistible. I have seen 
grave men frolic in the water, their trousers and sleeves 
swelled almost to bursting with the imprisoned air ; 
now clenching their toes firmly in some crevice and 
leaning back with all their force against the cushion of 
water that rocked them like a cradle ; now crouching 
low with arms akimbo while the interrupted stream 
sprang high above their heads in an arching curve, 
like a sea shell around a naiad ; now thrusting them- 
selves into invisibility against some rock over which 
the torrent broke in a noisy cascade, — ^their heads 
safe in the airhole near the crest, from which they 
dimly watched the passing figures in their oil skins, un- 
til they chose to startle them by re-appearing. To play 
so with Niagara brings an exhilaration that is inde- 
scribable. It ''washes brain and heart clean" and gives 
a child's courage for the tasks of the world. The exal- 
tation is heightened by the heavy roar of the cataract 
close above you, and the brilliant beauty of color all 
around you. You climb through one circular rainbow 
to the top of a black boulder and descend through 
another on the other side ; you cross slippery wooden 
bridges, exposed to such furious castigation from the 
sleet that you bend involuntarily in homage to the fear- 
ful power of your recent playfellow. Most glorious of 
all, whenever for a moment the eye is not so buffeted 
by driving spray as to deprive you entirely of your 



38 WHAT TO SEE. 

vision, look upwards, always upwards — where the 
flashing peaks of the American Fall tower above the 
deluge like the snowy summits of a mountain chain. 

In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought is not, in enjoyment it expires, — 
Rapt into still communion that transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise. 

II. 

The Maid of the Mist. — The Horse Shoe. 

Everywhere at Niagara the genius of the place has 
many different moods. Often at the Cave of the 
Winds there is not a rainbow ; sometimes when the 
spray beats down the river you can even enter the cave 
without a wetting. It may take twenty different trips 
to see all its splendor, but fully to see it once is 
worth them all. I know of nothing in Nature to be 
compared with it. The valley of the Rhone Glacier 
at dusk, when the white frozen mass of ice falls silently 
at your feet from the sky above, suggests it dimly, but 
only as the moon in dayHght suggests the sun. For 
many, though, the pleasures of the cave are too robust. 
All such should still attempt to see Niagara first from 
below, and the next best way is from the steamer called 
the Maid of the Mist. 



WHAT TO SEE. 39 

The approach is through Prospect Park, and by 
taking the central path to the incHned railway you can 
again reach the water's edge without so much as one 
glimpse of the Fall. As you come out of the house at 
the foot of the railway there is a territory at your left, 
full of attractions, but your way lies to the right. From 
the steamer landing you see a broad river of a dark 
green color, its surface glassy as a mirror, as placid 
and unruffled as if it had never known a struggle or a 
fall. Men swim in it with safety. Before you is the 
disappointing profile of the upper half of the American 
Fall. The lower half is hid by rocks and spray. Slip 
on one of the rubber cloaks in the saloon, take a rub- 
ber blanket, and rush forward to the choice seats at the 
very front of the upper deck. As the steamer moves 
sturdily forward, still through smooth green water, the 
air begins to fill with a soft spray, as fine and pene- 
trating as a Scotch mist, and the water is thickly over- 
laid with foam. You coast along the one thousand 
and sixty feet of the American Fall, close to the rocks 
below and so very close to the Fall itself that it is almost 
terrifying. Nothing is distinctly seen, for the eyes 
blink in the beating rain. You can see better if you wear 
glasses ; the wet glass dims them, but you can at least 
keep your eyes open more steadily. Nothing is dis- 
tinctly heard. The deep note of Niagara sounds in 
your ears with a heavy throb that is almost painful. 
You are confronted by a rippling, flashing, shimmering 



40 WHAT TO SEE. 

wall of white, a precipice of falling foam, furrowed in 
deep creases by the uneven contour of the brink, and 
rebounding high in a leaping cloud of spray that always 
hides the base from every eye. Near the steamer are 
many boulders ; the largest the Rock of Ages that 
stands before the entrance to the Cave of the Winds. 
Then come the bare cliffs of Goat Island, another 
thousand feet or more ; and then, — the Horse Shoe. 
Its lofty curving walls confront each other, one hun- 
dred and sixty feet in height, and in their contour fully 
three thousand feet, or more than half a mile. The 
plucky Maid pushes straight into this pit of falling 
waters ; forward she goes, into its depths, until for an 
instant, for one short second, there is nothing to the 
right, to the left, or before, nothing anywhere in the 
whole world for you but the enclosing cataracts fall- 
ing on all sides from the sky. It is just one second 
of crowded, glorious life, worth a year's pilgrimage. 
The little steamer has gone as far as the full force of 
her engines will carry her ; she lurches heavily, tosses 
like a cork on the white surging foam, wheels suddenly 
around, and shoots Hke an arrow down the stream 
and away. 

The views now are from the stern ; first of the rap- 
idly receding Horse Shoe, then of Goat Island, then of 
the American Fall as we coast again along its length, 
nearly as closely as before, and finally, from the Cana- 
dian dock, a panorama of both Falls. From here the 



WHAT TO SEE. 4 1 

boat returns to the American landing, but the tourist's 
best plan is to go ashore, climb the Canadian bank by 
the winding road, and either walk or ride along the 
crest of the cliff to Inspiration Point and to the former 
site of Table Rock. 

It is disappointing to the patriotic soul, but not to 
be disputed, that the finest views of Niagara are to be 
had on the Canadian side. Goat Island, the Three 
Sisters, Prospect Park, the Rapids and the River Road 
are all exceedingly beautiful. Perhaps there is more 
variety of beauty in the American Park than in the 
other, but when you have seen it all there is no place 
to which you come back so eagerly for rest and inspi- 
ration as to Table Rock and the Canadian shore. It 
is not the best first view, as has been said, for the 
rampart of Niagara is a mile in width, and, seen from 
a distance and from above, looks like a long, low wall. 
But for a final view, or a view to rest with, it has no 
equal. 

The Queen Victoria Park was not established until 
1888, or three years after the State of New York had 
purchased Goat Island and the land on the American 
side, and dedicated it to its people. Here and there 
are trifling indications of the different temper of the 
governments on either bank. Take for instance the 
governmental sign boards with their warning notices, 
which in Canada are less considerate of the tender feel- 
ings of the dear public than with us. Mark the auto- 



42 WHAT TO SEE, 

cratic barbarity of the British declaration that persons 
throwing stones over the bank will be prosecuted ac- 
cording to law, as compared with the exquisite deli- 
cacy of the placards that meet you at every turn on 
Goat Island: "Do Not Venture in Dangerous Places." 
" Do Not Harm the Trees and Shrubs." '' Stories 
Tliroivn Over the Bank May Fall upo7i People Below T 
On Goat Island you feel always as if your mother were 
with you. 

The Queen Victoria Park is much more trig than 
its neighbor. It has flower beds and close clipped 
lawns, rustic arbors and wigwams, busts of notables, 
and even fountains ! In the State Reservation, on the 
contrary, the more important portions are in a condi- 
tion almost primeval. Goat Island is still covered 
with original forest, except for the carriage ways and 
foot-paths that traverse its area. That this is so is due 
no doubt to the fortunate fact that for generations all 
the Niagara islands as well as part of the mainland 
were owned by the wealthy family of Gen. Peter B. 
Porter, well known in the War of 1 8 12. A sum- 
mer hotel on the bank of Goat Island, overlooking the 
Horse Shoe, would have been a source of enormous 
profit, but the sanctity of the place was never invaded. 
A pleasant story is told of one of the family who was 
asked in England if she had ever seen Niagara Falls. 
Drawing herself up proudly, she quite annihilated her 
questioner with the unexpected answer : *' Niagara 
Falls ! I own them." 



WHAT TO SEE. 43 



It is well to remind the visitor that in distributing 
his time the hours given to the Canadian Park should 
be in the afternoon. At Niagara, Canada is the land 
of the setting sun, and it is only in the afternooon that 
the superb bows can be seen which rise high in the 
sky, sometimes over-arching both Falls in a single 
curve. It is the other shore which is distinctly Rain- 
bow Land. Give only the sun, and on the American 
shore the wise pilgrim can have his rainbow, be it 
morning or be it afternoon. In the morning at Pros- 
pect Park if the day is clear one rainbow is certain, 
two are usual, and to see three concentric bows, each 
reversing the colors of its neighbor, is not uncommon. 
At the brink of the Horse Shoe it is the same, while 
in the afternoon I know of no more beautiful sight at 
Niagara than the view of Luna Island and the great 
American Fall, framed by an iridescent bow. 

Suppose, then, that it is the afternoon. You make 
your way along the Canadian shore towards Inspiration 
Point, and what we still call Table Rock, though the 
last vestige of the rock itself fell over forty years ago. 
You find at once that here the railroad has entered 
Paradise. The tracks of an electric road accompany 
you all the way. It was built in 1892, and runs along 
the whole Niagara gorge from Queenston, seven miles 
below, to the placid beauty of the Dufferin Islands, 
where iron railroad bridges now run side by side with 
all the older ones of inoffensive wood. The world 
must move. Electric cars run from The Hague to the 



44 WHAT TO SEE, 

bathing houses of Scheveningen. They run even from 
Florence to Fiesole, and how can Niagara be spared. 
They are necessary and laudable, but to the eye as 
unattractive as the cheap books that have opened liter- 
ature to the milHon. 

Below Inspiration Point the view may possibly be 
disappointing, but from this point on it is difficult for 
one who knows the place to see how even a new- 
comer can fail to be most powerfully impressed, 
especially if the conviction of the height of Niagara 
has been first well driven home by a journey through 
the Cave or on the steamer. Still, a Bostonian looked 
first from here and promptly wished to improve on 
Nature by removing the barren wall of Goat Island, 
so that there should be one continuous fall. A more 
legitimate and not infrequent source of disappointment 
is due to the heavy spray. Over and over travellers 
brought with care to Table Rock for their first view, 
open their eyes to see only an invisible Niagara, both 
American Fall and the Horse Shoe being veiled com- 
pletely by a loud thundering cloud of mist. 

Ordinarily, however, as you advance towards the 
Horse Shoe, and see farther and farther into its white 
recesses until at Table Rock you are admitted almost 
to the heart of its secrets, the sensation of awe in the 
presence of such majesty is irresistible. You stand at 
one limit of the vast curve. Your eye traverses the 
whole extent of the silent sheets of plunging water, 



WHAT TO SEE. 45 

and follows them downward to the milky sea beneath. 
From below rise such enormous clouds of shifting 
spray that at times all outlines are confused. The 
vagueness magnifies each distance, and through the 
blur the opposite crest seems infinitely far away, and 
the chasm bottomless. The effect is all of white and 
gray, and yet conspicuous before you is the great 
Green Water, the one place where the flood of Niagara 
does not break instantly into foam but clings together 
in a soHd sheet that descends for many feet unbroken, 
exhibiting the exquisite color of the green deep sea. 
The water nearer is sometimes turbid and yellow. 
Everywhere its surface has a waxen, sheeny glaze that 
is characteristic of Niagara. At the convergence of 
the two opposite faces of the cataract the confusion 
of waters is indescribable. Above all mounts the 
white column of spray that seems to 

'' Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth." 
The man or woman here who does not descend 
to the foot of the precipice commits a sin unpardon- 
able. Fear may forbid the Cave of the Winds, or even 
the Maid of the Mist, but here you have firm Mother- 
earth to stand on. If the whim of the wind allows 
you dry rocks you can lie at your ease in the sun and 
drink in almost the view which the prow of the steamer . 
presents for a second and then snatches from you. 
You are in the same white pit of downward rushing 
walls. You have almost the same sense of having 



46 WHAT TO SEE. 

conquered the inaccessible, of having invaded sanctity. 
It is hke the disembodied joys of spirits. 

Mr. Howells has spoken of the repose of Niagara. 
Another paradox is its silence. The sheets of falling 
water are so unchanging to the eye that the motion 
seems no more actual than when the breeze runs 
through a field of grain. It moves without moving. 
In some such way the unchanging volume of sound 
soon leaves on the ear a strange sense of silence. Now 
and again, however, as some more compact mass of 
water makes its fall, a new note strikes the ear, and 
under all is the heavy beating of the air as if of sound 
too low for the range of human hearing. It has always 
seemed to me as if much of the voice of Niagara might 
be to us inaudible.* 

It is strange that no great poem has yet been writ- 
ten for Niagara. Many have tried their hand, but 
there is nothing of established fame, nothing that is 
known for itself as well as for its subject. There is 
line after line, however, of Coleridge's Hymn to Mont 
Blanc which if once thought of at Niagara will be 
always thought of there. Verse after verse is curi- 
ously apposite. Those who have never made the 
translation from mountain to cataract will find in it a 
wealth of new associations for both poem and place. 

*In Scribner's Magazine for February, 1881, there is an article on " The 
Music of Niagara," by Eugene M.Thayer. He writes the chords of its dif- 
ferent harmonies, but finds them /our octaves lower than the key boards of 
our pianos. 




''Wm^ \l^, 





T[\e Horse Shoe Falls from the Three Sisters — Dufferin Islands in the distance. 



WHAT TO SEE. 47 

The waters at thy base 
Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful Form, 
[Fallest] from forth thy silent sea of green, 
How silently 

dread and silent [Fall !] I gazed upon thee 
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 

Didst vanish from my thought. Entranced in prayer 

1 worshipped the Invisible alone. 

Yet like some sweet beguiHng melody. 

So sweet we know not we are listening to it. 

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, — 

Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy — 

Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused, 

Into the mighty vision passing — there, 

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven. 

Who gave you your invulnerable hfe. 

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy. 

Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? 

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven 
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers 
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? 
God ! — let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God ! 

III. 

TJie Islands — The Rapids — The American Shore. 
The Titans of Niagara have been presented. They 
are grand, beautiful, but overpowering. The strain 



48 WHAT TO SEE. 

on the sensations is so exhausting that to stay long 
with them is oppressive. You look your fill and then 
are more than glad to withdraw to the more human 
pleasures of the islands. Above the Horse Shoe on 
the Canadian shore the Dufferin Islands are the per- 
fection of rustic loveliness. They are just a tangled 
cluster of wooded islands, with thin gray sheets of 
swift water rushing around them, but they are ex- 
quisite. There are Lovers' Walks, and bowers, 
and platforms, and on the outskirts the open, breezy 
river, and the sweep of the White Horse rapids. The 
American islands, however, are anchored in the very 
centre of Niagara. Two of them, Luna Island and 
Goat Island, are on the brink of the Fall, and the latter 
of these is a famous treasure-house of delights. You 
circle round it by a shady road with cool forest depths 
on one side and on the other a steep, wooded bank 
with glimpses of the river through the leaves. A 
flight of steps leads down to Luna Island, and from its 
landings affords the finest view that is to be had of the 
American Fall. If you study it closely you will find 
that there are subtle harmonies in the color of Niagara 
as well as in its music. The Fall is by no means only 
gray and white. If the sun favors, you will find at 
times faint tints of lavender, of rose, and green. 

A low bridge leads directly over the roof of the 
Cave of the Winds to Luna Island. This bridge in 
winter is so thickly crusted with ice that as you cross 



WHAT TO SEE . 49 

your' feet are almost level with the railing at the side. 
The island itself is so called from the lunar rainbow 
which is often seen from it in the spray, — a mere, dim 
ghost of a rainbow, hardly brighter than the third arch 
even of a solar bow. It is beautiful to see, but the 
beauty lies less in the bow itself than in its weird, 
accompaniment of night shadows and moonhght. The 
island is small, and so flat upon the water that a trifle 
would submerge it. The shallow transparent sheet of 
water that passes over the long ragged edge of the 
American Fall is so near your feet that you can touch 
it as it leaves the brink. 

In fact, everywhere the great accessibility of Niagara 
is strongly felt. It never holds you at arms length. 
From the opposite bank, at Prospect Park, it is the 
same. As you look down at the huge clouds of 
smoky vapor you lean over a low parapet of stone 
along which the river brushes as it makes the plunge ; 
and if you continue now along the Goat Island road 
to the Horse Shoe you can paddle in the water at 
the very verge. There is never the tantalizing wish 
to get " a little nearer." Except for occasional dashes 
of spray, no monarch of Nature allows more absolute 
freedom of approach. 

From Goat Island, the Horse Shoe shows but one 
of its curving faces, but it is that which is crowned by 
the wonderful Green Water already mentioned. It is 
better seen from the bank above than from below. 



50 • WHAT TO SEE. 

The rich green mass descends unbroken until it is lost 
to sight behind the nearer curve of the Fall. You see 
no chasm ; merely two edges with a deep seam or scar 
between, broken at moments by a sudden, spurting 
leap of spray from the invisible depths, a silent mes- 
senger of the tumult below. 

o 

The road leaves the Horse Shoe. A broad, breezy 
view fills the eye, and presently appear the iron bridges 
of the Three Sister Islands. The first bridge crosses 
a thin stream of water, so quiet that no one would be 
afraid to wade to the other side. There is no suggestion 
of the rush and roar of Niagara. The second stream 
is much more turbulent. The third, narrow but noisy, 
comes racing down the slope with breathless speed, 
and crashes immediately over a low parapet of rock 
with an uproar as of forty Niagaras. It is so little 
and so furious that it frightens you. It shakes the 
water into shreds and tatters and flings it down in a 
tangled heap of white motion, to pass on instantly 
without reprieve to the new fate beyond. It is like 
torture before death. A soft green dimple in the lower 
stream is all that marks the vortex of the Horse Shoe 
into which the water plunges 

The small bridge quivers with the rush of water so 
close below it. This bridge and Prospect Park are 
said to be the favorite resorts of men intent on suicide, 
but those who care for life can hardly find a dearer 
lingering spot for a long summer's day than at the foot 
of this small torrent. 



WHAT TO SEE. 5 I 

The Third Sister gives again the broad, free out- 
look on the river. Not far from the shore is the Spout- 
ing Rock, or Leaping Horse, where the water shoots up 
at intervals in a dash of spray. A little clambering over 
the rocks of the island brings you to the water's edge, 
where you can look up the current to the horizon. By 
springing over a narrow gap you reach a boulder near 
the shore, on the farther side of which the water sweeps 
down a little glassy shoot shaped like a beaver's tail. 
Tiny white waves keep curling up it from below, try- 
ing to climb the slope. The pigmy army is unwearied 
in its attack, but, like Sisyphus, it toils upward in vain. 

The carriage road and foot path lead from the 
Sisters to the Parting of the Waters at the upper end 
of Goat Island, where the river divides its mass for 
either Fall very quietly, with only a light ripple on the 
shore ; and still farther is a glen known as "The Spring." 
Then come the bridges to the main land, and the tour 
of Goat Island has been accomplished. 

It is late to speak of the famous rapids above Goat 
Island bridge. To half the visitors of Niagara they 
are the chief source of pleasure. To see them it is 
necessary, absolutely, to descend to one of the plat- 
forms at the river's edge. Unless you do so they 
have not been seen. Sit half an hour, at least, watch- 
ing, and the fascination will seize you irresistibly. It 
is like a great turmoil of tossing ostrich feathers, ex- 
cept that there is feverish life in these white plumes, 
restlessly curling. There are tags of verse in the mind 



52 



WHAT TO SEE. 



everywhere at Niagara. The one that speaks to me 
here is from Matthew Arnold : 

Now the wild white horses play, 
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 

And again : 

The wild white horses foam and fret, 
'' Margaret! Margaret! " 

In sunshine these rapids blaze from a distance like 
white fire and are intolerable to the eye. Beyond them, 
at the water's edge, is a willow grove which gives 
again the constant alternation between peace and con- 
flict that makes Niagara so bewildering ; and if you 
wish in full measure a benediction on your day, return 
to the train by the lovely River Road which follows 
the bank in an easy curve that is a delight to the 
senses. It is but a moment longer to the station, and 
I know of nothing that will leave so sweet a flavor in 
the mind. 

IV. 

Lower Niagara — The Whirlpool Rapids and 
Whirlpool — Lewis ton . 

All this — Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist and 
all — may be seen in a day by the abject slave to time. 
He will come away dazed, uncertain, almost, whether 
the cataract flows up or down, and unfit, utterly, to say 
a word in criticism, either of praise or blame. Still, if a 
day is all that life allows you, it is best to crowd it full. 



WHAT TO SEE. 



53 



Even the one-day tourist, if not afraid of mental indi- 
gestion, can make room in his day for all this, and yet 
find time for a glimpse, too, of lower Niagara. 

Ten minutes by trolley, five by the train, take you 
to the village of Suspension Bridge, the Whirlpool 
Rapids, and the Whirlpool. Rather than these, how- 
ever, if you are pressed for time, take the open obser- 
vation cars of the New York Central through the 
gorge, to Lewiston. You will not be able to cross off 
the Whirlpool from your list of sights accomplished, 
but the deep gorge of the Niagara to Lake Ontario is 
more worth seeing. If time allows, however, see 
them all, especially the lower rapids. 

The Whirlpool Rapids are wilder, finer, in every 
way more splendid than the rapids above the Falls. 
You go down Buttery's elevator (the other is less 
good), and at the foot between high walls of rock you 
find a mass of roaring water that leaps incredibly into 
the air. Seen from the bank it sometimes hides a low 
house on the other shore. The place is one to linger 
at for hours, and is one of the chief glories of the Falls. 
In trying to swim these rapids Captain Webb was 
drowned. Here all the army of cranks pass through 
in barrels. Here, too, in 1886, a modest Boston 
policeman, William J. Kendall, swam through with 
only a life preserver to protect him. 

From the rapids if you are adventurous you can 
reach the Whirlpool by following the shore and climb- 



54 WHAT TO SEE. 

ing up the bank. If more prudent or in haste, you 
take the elevator as before, and then the road. 
Through the inevitable bazaar of curiosities you pass 
to the grounds of the Whirlpool. As you look down 
over the bank the first sensation is surprising, almost 
uncanny. Niagara is caught in a trap. It enters a circle 
without outlet. Your eye follows the whole contour 
and finds no interruption in the line of shore. From a 
few steps farther to the right you see below you the 
narrow gap through which the river turns, at a full 
right angle with its former course. It seems as if a 
girl could throw a stone across, but men have tried and 
seen the stone land on the nearer shore, short of the 
water's edge. 

Those who expect to find a maelstrom in the Pool 
will be ludicrously taken by surprise. No country 
mill pond could be more serene. The water cir- 
cles lazily around its pen as if indifferent whether it 
escaped or not. Above the hole and below is the 
rattle of the rapids and the glitter of their white spray, 
but the Whirlpool itself is dark and still. When the 
first disappointment is over at not seeing the boiling, 
riotous whirl of the railway posters, you realize a si- 
lent strength and majesty that grow awful. It is not so 
hard to believe that w^hat is once drawn down into its 
center will not emerge for days. 

To catalogue the pleasures of Niagara and not de- 
scribe the many tramps it offers would be a great mis- 



WHAT TO SEE. 55 

take. The shortest and perhaps the best is down the 
gorge to Lewiston, about five miles, a very easy jour- 
ney for an afternoon. Begin not at Niagara but at 
Suspension Bridge. Two miles of countiy road lead 
to the Devil's Hole, the scene in 1765 of a massacre 
of English by the French and Indians who forced them 
down the cliff. Upon a broad plateau of rocks you 
look down on the tops of trees that fill the pit below. 
The rapids of the river spot its dark green surface with 
white, and their clamor is always in the air. A few steps 
farther on you leave the road, from which there are no 
views, and take the railroad track, a ledge halfway up 
the side of the cliff, with a sheer mountain of rocks 
above and the wonderful river talking loudly below. 
Keep on the track to Lewiston and then come back by 
train ; or if you have a whole day's time and can stand 
a more vigorous walk, begin on the Canadian side of 
the Suspension Bridge, walk by the road to the Whirl- 
pool, crawl around its circling beach over ground 
thick with petrified leaves, and when you reach the 
outlet climb somehow up the bluff and keep to the 
brink until you reach Brock's Monument and Queens- 
ton. It is perhaps seven miles, and if you are rowed 
across at the Queenston ferry and come back up the 
railroad track from Lewiston you will have had a glo- 
rious day. The walk along the Canadian brink is 
tangled and rough, and often lengthened by retreating 
gorges which have to be skirted, but the views are 



56 WHAT TO SEE. 

beautiful. There are many jutting bluffs, and in the 
gorges are fantastic boulders. Upon the hill below the 
monument to General Brock you look far off to Lake 
Ontario ; it is another place for a day's resting. 

If you take this for an epilogue to Niagara you 
may like also a prologue. There is no pleasanter 
approach than to walk or drive from Buffalo on the 
Canadian shore. The distance is not more than twenty 
miles and the road is almost always at the water's edge, 
almost upon the beach. 

V. ■ 

Seasons and Moods. 

The perfect time for the trip to Lewiston is in 
October. The Canadian bank is then a blaze of flame, 
and the green river below and blue sky above make a 
beautiful color picture. The most lovely time for 
upper Niagara is in early spring, when Goat Island is 
covered with flowers and the trees show every tender 
shade of green. The most wonderful season is, how- 
ever, undoubtedly mid-winter. 

Niagara in winter is Hke a fairy tale come true. 
The spray gathers and freezes so incessantly that twigs 
the size of knitting needles are cased with ice until they 
have the bigness of a squirrel's tail. Whole bushes 
are so covered, with a heavy splendor that pins them 
to the earth. A low sun flashing through this ice 



WHAT TO SEE. 57 

turns it to jewels. It is as if the rainbows of Niagara 
were flung before you in a tangled heap. 

Below the American Fall the ice cone gathers and 
grows to the height of seventy-five or even of a hundred 
feet. Men climb it with spiked shoes and coast fear- 
lessly down. The freezing spray covers your hat with 
enamel and makes your overcoat a rigid board. 

Once in three or four years a so-called ice bridge 
forms. A warm day melts the field of ice above the 
Falls. It crashes down and chokes together in the 
narrow gorge below, forming an ice floe like a bridge 
from shore to shore. This bridge becomes a second 
Ponte Vecchio. It is lined at once on either side by 
mushroom booths where peddlers sell their wares. 
They take your tintype with Niagara for a background, 
but those who lend themselves to such an insult to 
the place are usually satisfied to sit before a hideous 
pasteboard scene although Niagara itself is close at 
hand. The merchants deal in foreign liquor upon the 
doubtful international line. 

The ice bridge in itself is only this. It is its asso- 
ciation with the winter scenery, and the vantage ground 
it gives for novel points of view, that make it well 
worth seeing. In winter usually you miss the charm 
of lazy summer lingering, but on the ice bridge you 
change the fleeting views the Maid of the Mist affords 
for ones more at your ease. You walk sturdily where 
you will, and look till you are satisfied. The pleasure. 



58 WHAT TO SEE. 

tao, is greater at the water's edge than on a steamer's 
deck. Just so in summer it is pleasantest to cross by 
a small row-boat that ferries passengers. 

It is not only the seasons that change the aspect of 
Niagara. In fact it differs every day in mood. You 
cannot go twice to the same place without seeing some 
new thing. One day you can climb higher than ever 
before upon the rocks at the base of Prospect Park 
until you sit dry in the shadow of the American Fall, 
fairly behind its sheet. Another day you cannot put 
your head outside of the house at the foot of the in- 
clined railway without meeting a blinding shower of 
spray from the same Fall that makes any visit to the 
rocks impossible. These changes of the spray occur 
with disconcerting suddenness, especially below. The 
wind whips suddenly around the compass and before 
you think lashes the spray at your face. I have seen a 
girl who stood too near the Fall drenched instantly 
with such a rush of spray that everything upon her 
was wet through. Even when above a little wettings 

o o 

often comes. 

These are the natural aspects of Niagara. To sec 
it in more unfamiliar, curious beauty, as only one 
in hundreds cares to do, walk by summer moonlight 
through the Lewiston gorge or see the Horse Shoe by 
the winter moon. 

To read too much of a place before seeing it is to 
prepare the way for disappointment. Unconsciously 



WHAT TO SEE. 59 

you expect to crowd into the first impression all the 
finest aspects of repeated visits made by others in their 
happiest moods. You are in danger, too, ot displacing 
your own natural sensations by others ready made. 
A descriptive guide book stunts perception as often as 
it stimulates it. The purpose of this sketch lies in the 
hope that, just as a word may kindle memories and 
enrich itself in the mind of the hearer, these details may 
serve for a nucleus around which the scattering recol- 
lections of the place may gather more distinctly. 

One final word. If after all, with all the time you 
have, Niagara disappoints you, pray have the grace to 
remember that the fault may be your own. In a sense 
you can see in it only what you bring with you. As has 
been said, if no man is a hero to his valet it is not per- 
haps because the hero is no hero, but because the valet 
is only a valet. 



STATISTICS. 

Niagara. Said to be an Iroquois word, meaning 

"Thunderer of Waters." 
Niagara River. 

Width, above the Falls, about 4,400 feet ; below the 
Falls, about 1,000 feet; at the Whirlpool, about 
400 feet. 
Length of river, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, 
36 miles. 



6o WHAT TO SEE. 

Descent, from lake to lake, 336 feet, as follows: 

from Lake Erie to the Falls, (22 miles,) 70 feet, 

(55 feet of this in the Rapids, ^ mile); at the 

Falls, 160 feet; from the Falls to Lake Ontario, 

(14 miles), 106 feet. 
Current, estimated at from 4 miles per hour in the 

quietest places to 40 miles at the Whirlpool 

Rapids. 
Depth, estimated at 20 feet in the river above the 

Falls ; at the Whirlpool Rapids, 250 feet; in the 

Whirlpool, 400 feet. 
Volume. Estimated that 15,000,000 cubic feet of 

water per minute pass over the Falls, or about 

one cubic mile per week. 

Niagara Falls. 

Width of Falls at the brink, including Goat Island, 
5,370 feet, as follows : American Falls, 1,060 feet ; 
Goat Island, about 1,300 feet; the Horse Shoe, 
in 1890, 3,010 feet. 
Tlie Horse Shoe Falls. 

Height, 158 feet. Contour, in 1890, 3,010 feet; in 
1886, 2,600 feet; in 1842, 2,260 feet. Width 
across, at widest point, about 1,200 feet. Depth 
of water at brink, estimated 20 feet. 
Average annual recession, 2.18 feet; total recession 
from 1842 to 1890, 104^ feet. Total area of 
recession for the same 48 years, 6^ acres. 



WHAT TO SEE. 6 1 

The American Fall. 

Height, 167 feet. Contour, in 1890, 1,060 feet; in 
1842, 1,080 feet. Average annual recession, 
jyi inches; total recession from 1842 to 1890, 
30^ feet. Total area of recession for same 
period, ^ acre. 
TJie New York State Reservation. 

Area, 107 acres. Purchased by the State of New 
York, under Acts of April 30, 1883, and April 
30, 1885, for ;^ 1, 433, 429. 50: formally opened to 
the pubHc July 15, 1885. 
TJie Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park. 

Area, 154 acres. Preliminary Act of Legislature 
passed 1885. Park opened to the public, May 
24, 1888. 
Goat Island. 

Area, about 63 acres ; in early records said to 
have contained 250 acres. (Gull Island, south of 
Goat Island, is said to have contained two acres 
of land in 1840. There is hardly a trace of it 
now.) -Circumference of island, about one mile. 
First bridge built, 1817 ; present bridge, 1856. 

Bridges to Three Sister Islands built 1868. 

The price paid by the State of New York for Goat 
Island and all the surrounding Islands except a 
part of Bath Island, was ;^525,ooo,oo. 
Suspension Bridge. 

Height of floor above river, 190 feet; height of 



62 WHAT TO SEE. 

towers, lOO feet; length of span, 1268 feet. First 
built, 1868-69; blown down and rebuilt, 1889. 
Steamers " Maid of the Mist.'' 

First boat built and run, 1846. Larger boat built, 
1854. Ran the Whirlpool and Rapids to Lewis- 
ton, to escape the sheriff, 1861. First of present 
boats launched, 1885, 71 feet long; second 
launched, 1892, 85 feet long. 

CHARGES. 

Within Nezv York State Reservation. 

Inclined Railway, Prospect Park. Either way, 5 

cents. Stairs free. 
Steamers *' Maid of the Mist," with rubber coat, 50 

cents. 
Cave of the Winds, guide and dress, ;^i.oo. 
Within Canadian Reservation. 

Behind Horse Shoe Falls, with guide and dress, 50 

cents. 
Dufferin Islands, 50 cents for carriage and all occu- 
pants, 10 cents for pedestrian. 
Suspension Bridge. 

Upper bridge, over and back, 25 cents. Lower 
bridge, two miles below, over and back, 10 cents. 
Whirlpool. 

American or Canadian side, 50 cents. 
Whirlpool Rapids. 

American or Canadian side, with elevator, 50 cents. 
Brock's Monument, 185 feet high; built 1853. ^ 



WHAT TO SEE. 63 

former monument, 126 feet high, built in 1826, 
was destroyed by explosion in 1 840. Gen. Brock 
fell in 18 1 3. Admission to top of monument, 50 
cents. 

CARRIAGE HIRE. 

N. V. Reservation Omnibuses. 

Round trip, including circuit of Goat Island, with 
stop-overs, 25 cents. Shorter trips with stop- 
overs, 15 cents. Children under twelve years, 
half fare. Children under five years, fee. 
Carriage Rates by Niagara Falls Ordinances. 

Two horses, first hour ;^2.oo, each additional hour 
^1.50. One horse, first hour ^1.50, each ad- 
ditional hour $ 1 .00. 




Bird's-eye view of Niagara Kiver. 



The Geology of Nie^ 



BY 

Prop:NS-.Shaler 



Dean oj'the Laivreme Scieniijjc Si hcol. Harvard University 




THE effect of the more majestic spectacles of nature ' 
is to turn the mind of the observer away from 
the philosophy of the e\cnts which he is observing. 
This IS a natural and wholesome action of all splendid , 
things ; he is indeed happy who flies at once to specu- 
lation as to the cause of that which he for the first time 
freely beholds. There is, however, a second stage in 
the service which the great spectacles of the earth can 
do for us. This is where we seek to understand the 
ways in which the offering is made to our souls. The 
well-trained naturalist, indeed any one who is attentive 
to the aesthetic as well as the rational opportunities of 
the world, learns in a manner to combine these im- 
pressions which may come to him by instinctive ap- 
preciation and by knowledge. To him the beautiful 
and the magnificent are none the less moving because 
he sees them in the perspective of history, or in the 
great assemblage of causations. It is the fairest 
province of science to afford these accessories of 
understanding so that the beauty of nature may 
make a deeper impression upon the mind of man. 



^ 



56 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

Its work should in no wise diminish our perception or 
esteem of the beautiful ; it should in fact unite these 
motives with our ordinary thought. Therefore it seems 
fit that we should consider the lessons which may be 
derived from a study of this great water-fall. 

The first step towards the comprehension of any such 
feature as Niagara Falls should lead the student to an 
understanding of a general kind as to the range of the 
phenomena with which it is allied. We will there- 
fore begin our inquiry by a brief consideration as to the 
various kinds of water-falls, and the conditions which 
produce them. It is easy to recognize the truth that 
all streams tend to form continuous and uninterrupted 
slopes down which their waters course from the high- 
lands to the sea. It is to this principle, indeed, that 
we owe the fact that nearly all great rivers are freely 
navigable, and the most of the lesser are, for the 
greater part of their length, fit for small boats. 
Wherever we find a river in the tumult of a water-fall 
or of a cascade we readily note that it is steadfastly en- 
gaged in destroying the obstruction, and that given 
geologic time enough it will wear a channel down 
which its waters may glide quietly to the deep whence 
they came, and to which they inevitably return. If a 
new continent should be elevated, and rivers formed 
upon it, they would quickly develop a host of water- 
falls. If the continent were high, it would be a land of 
cascades. Gradually, as the land became older, these 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 6/ 

barriers in the way of the descending water would be 
worn away. With the formation of each mountain 
system, however, or with the occurrence of other acci- 
dents, such as those which are brought about by a 
glacial period, the paths of the streams would be dis- 
turbed, and the rivers would once again have to con- 
tend with obstructions which they seek to remove. 
Philosophical geographers now recognize the fact that 
the presence of water-falls in a country means that the 
topography is, in a geological sense, new ; that the re- 
gion has either recently been uplifted from the sea, or 
has, not long ago, undergone considerable revolutions, 
which have changed the shape of its surface. 

Among the many different conditions which pro- 
duce cataracts, we may note the following groups, 
which include the greater part of these accidents : In 
mountain districts small streams gathered in the table- 
lands or upland valleys often encounter a precipice 
down which they find their way in successive leaps. 
The cliffs over which they tumble are not, as is the 
case at Niagara, the product of the stream's action, but 
have generally been formed by a fault or a break in the 
rocks, the strata on one side of the disruption having 
been lifted so that a wall-like escarpement is created. - 
In other cases the valley has been deeply carved by a 
stream of fluid or of frozen water, a river or a glacier. 
Water-falls of this nature, though rarely of great vol- 
ume, afford the most beautiful and highest cascades in 



6S -THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

the world. Those of the Yosemite Valley, or of Lau- 
terbrunnen, in Switzerland, are excellent examples of 
this kind. 

Wherever a stream, be it small or great, encount- 
ers in its course conditions in which it passes from a 
hard to a soft rock, or rather we should say from 
strata which it does not easily attack to other deposits 
which are readily worn away, the change is commonly 
marked by a rapid or water-fall. This alteration may 
be due to any one of many causes. Commonly it is 
brought about by a dike, or fissure filled with volcanic 
rock, which lies across the channel of the river. In 
our limestone rocks an ancient coral reef, buried in the 
strata, may produce a considerable cascade. The Falls 
of the Ohio at Louisville are due to the fact that such 
an ancient reef lies athwart the path of that river. 

Along the seashore wherever the waves have 
carved, as they often do, an overhanging steep, the 
streams, which may originally have flowed down gently 
declining beds, tumble over precipices, sometimes fall- 
ing, as on the north shore of the Island of Anticosti, 
directly into the ocean. In all such cases we may as- 
sume that the cliffs have been driven backward into 
the land by the effect of the surges. 

By far the commonest origin of water-falls is to be 
found where horizontal stratified rocks arranged in al- 
ternating beds of hard and soft character are flo^Yed 
over by a considerable stream. In these conditions 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 69 

the bed of the river is apt to lie on one of the hard 
layers upon which it courses until it cuts the layer 
through ; then encountering the underlying soft ma- 
terials it quickly wears them away down to the level of 
the next resisting stratum, where the process is re- 
peated, forming, it may be, a dozen steps of descent in 
the course of a few miles. Each of the *' treads " of 
such a stairway is apt to be many times as wide as the 
fall is high ; but where the river has a great volume 
the down rush of water is apt to break up the lower- 
lying harder layers so that one great fall is produced. 
The reader will do well to see the beautiful system of 
step cascades known as Trenton Falls, where West 
Canada Creek descends from the highland about its 
source through a beautiful gorge of its own carving in 
many successive leaps. 

The foregoing brief story concerning the natural 
history of water-falls has led us to the point where we 
may begin our inquiries concerning the genesis of 
Niagara. This fall belongs to the last-mentioned group 
of cascades, that in which the course of the river is 
determined in a great measure by the diverse resist- 
ance which horizontically-bedded rocks opposed to the 
wearing action of the water. In order, however, to face 
the many (interesting questions which this river and fall 
present to the naturalist, we must ask the reader at the 
outset to obtain a clear idea as to the conditions of the 
valley of the stream from the point where it leaves 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. y I 

Lake Erie to that where it enters Lake Ontario. The 
ideal way to obtain this impression would be to view 
the country from the sumit of a tower having a height 
of five hundred feet or more, standing at a point near 
the present line of the falls. It is indeed most desirable 
from the point of view of the teacher, as well as others 
who love wide views, that such a '' coin of vantage " 
should be constructed. In passing, we may remark 
that such an outlook would enable the observer to 
command the whole field of nearly level country from 
lake to lake. The student would thus be able to per- 
ceive directly what he can only otherwise infer from the 
maps and bird's eye views. Using, however, these 
last named means of illustration, we readily observe 
the following facts concerning the course of Niagara 
River. We follow the prevailing fashion in terming 
this stream a river. It is, in fact, a mere strait connect- 
ing two fresh water seas, the one lying about three 
hundred feet above the other. 

Near its point of exit from Lake Erie the stream 
passes over a low uplift of the strata which somewhat 
interrupts its flow. A little way on in its path the tide 
is divided, enclosing a large island and som.e smaller 
isles. Its movement is slow, and in general the condi- 
tion of the stream and its banks remind one of the 
lower parts of a great river where it is about to enter 
the sea. The striking feature is, that from Lake Erie 
to Goat Island the stream has no distinct valley. It 



72 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

has evidently done none of that downward carving 
which is so conspicuous a feature in the work of all 
ordinary rivers where they flow at a considerable height 
above the ocean's level. In part this absence of a 
valley is to be accounted for by the absolute purity of 
the water. Ordinary rivers bear much sediment, the 
coarser parts of which are driven along the bottom 
continuously, though slightly wearing the bed-rock 
away as they rub over it ; but in the Niagara all these 
sediments which the streams bring from the uplands 
are deposited in the chain of the great lakes. 

At Goat Island the conditions are suddenly 
changed. In the rapids and in the main falls the river 
descends about two hundred feet into a deep gorge, 
through which it flows as far as Lewiston in a more or 
less tumultuous manner. At this point the channel 
passes through the escarpement which borders the 
southern margin of Lake Ontario. Here it ceases to 
flow as rapidly as before, the tide of waters finding 
ample room in the deep channel for a leisurely jour- 
ney to the lower lake. 

The gorge of the Niagara, though deep, is very nar- 
row : to the eye of the trained observer it appears 
almost as unlike an ordinary river valley as is the path 
of the stream above the cataract. Everywhere the 
walls are steep ; there is no trace of the alluvial plain 
which normally borders great rivers ; nor do we find the 
slope of country towards the edge of the chff which is 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 73 

SO characteristic of ordinary valleys. This depression, 
indeed, is a true canon, a trough carved by a main 
stream without any coincident work of erosion effected 
by the rain, frost and water-courses operating on 
either side of its path. These features have led geolo- 
gists, as they well may lead any intelligent observer, 
to the conclusion that the Niagara River is from be- 
ginning to end a new-made stream ; a watercourse 
which originated not as most of our American rivers 
have in remote ages, but in the geological yesterday. 
The reason for this sudden coming into existence of 
the Niagara, the steps which led to its invention, are 
now undergoing a very careful discussion through the 
labors of several able geologists.* Although there is 
much which is still doubtful, concerning the history of 
this singular stream, a great deal of interest has been 
well ascertained. The outlines of this matter we will 
now endeavor to set before the reader. . 

In endeavoring to comprehend the history of Ni- 
agara, it is necessary to take account of the singular 
conditions presented by the great valley in which it 
lies. The St. Lawrence is on some accounts the most 
curious of all the great vales which geographers have 
had an opportunity to study. The most of the river- 



*The literature concerning the problems of the Niagara River is abundant, 
but widely scattered. The ablest single contribution to the subject is by Mr. 
G. K. Gilbert, Geologist, U. S. Geological survey. It is contained in the sixth 
annual report of the Commissioners of the State reservation at Niagara, for 
the year i88g.— Albany, James B. Lyon, Printer, 1890. References to various 
other treatisfes'on the subject may be found in the foot-note of that paper, 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 75 

basins in the world have their boundaries defined by a 
considerable elevation. If, here and there, they have a 
low side over which we may pass to a neighboring 
valley without traversing a decided water-shed, the 
partial breach of the boundaries is very limited in its 
length. In the St, Lawrence valley, however, from the 
lower end of Lake Ontario to the mouth of Lake Su- 
perior the basin is on its southern side but ill-defined. 

The low, broad ridge which separates the drainage 
from that of the streams which flow into the Hudson, 
or into the Mississippi, is frequently breached by de- 
pressions through which the waters belonging to the 
Great Lakes system may readily be discharged when- 
ever their elevation is considerably altered, or when by 
chance a barrier is interposed to their exit through the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. Accidents of this description 
have been probably of frequent occurrence, so that from 
time to time the geographical relations of these waters 
have been greatly changed. 

The Great Lakes of the St. Lawrence valley were 
probably in existence before the last glacial period, 
though they were doubtless extended and somewhat 
modified in form by the wearing of the rocks which 
occurred in that wonderful age. With the beginning 
of the glacial period the ice-sheet of eastern North 
America, which is now limited to Greenland, rapidly 
extended its bounds over the land to the northward of 
the Great Lakes. It soon filled their basins, and ex- 



^6 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

tended southward until its margin attained the Ohio 
River where Cincinnati now stands, and lay over the 
head-waters of all the valleys of the streams which pour 
from the South into the Great Lakes. It is easy to see 
that such an ice-sheet having the depth of a mile or more 
would profoundly disturb the drainage of these rivers. 
In its advance it would first create a dam across the 
waters of the St. Lawrence River, compelling the lakes 
to rise until they discharged through some of the low 
places on their southern boundary ; next it must have 
filled their basins with ice, and deepened the sheet 
until its surface lay thousands of feet above their 
floor. We cannot trace the history of these alterations 
which' the advance of the glacial envelope brought 
upon this field of land and water. But the steps in 
the alterations may be inferred from what happened 
when the envelope retreated stage by stage until it 
vanished from the continent, or at least from the part 
of the field with which we are concerned. For a time 
the barrier lay in such a position that the waters of the 
Lakes below Superior were barred out from the passage 
of Niagara, flowing over into the valley of the Ohio 
through a channel passing by the site of the City of 
Fort Wayne, and thence into the Wabash River. 
This old waterway has been preserved with unmistak- 
able clearness. With the further retreat of the ice- 
front to the northeastward, the Hne of the barrier was 
withdrawn to near the present mouth of Lake 



78 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

Ontario, where it flows into the St. Lawrence River. 
At this time the level of the Great Lakes was lowered 
by successive stages, though on the whole rather sud- 
denly, to the amount of five hundred and fifty feet. 

With the last mentioned condition of the ice bar- 
rier the exit of the Great Lakes changed to a path 
which led through Central New York, down the valley 
of the Mohawk River. The channel still shows the 
marks of the great tide of water, probably as great in 
its volume as that which now passes Niagara Falls. 
Those who journey by the New York Central Railway 
to and from Albany, may note at Little Falls the broad 
gorge of the sometime great river which is now occu- 
pied by a relatively small stream. It might be sup- 
posed that at this stage the observer would have 
found the Niagara river flowing in somewhere near its 
present position. But here comes in one of the extra- 
ordinary accidents of that period of geographic won- 
ders, the great Ice Age. When the ice lay over the 
country to the north of the Great Lakes, the part of 
the continent which it occupied appears to have been 
borne down by the weight of the mass in such a man- 
ner that it sloped to the northward at the rate of two 
or three feet to the mile. The result was that the 
basin of Lake Erie was to a great extent dry, and that 
of Lake Huron did not connect across to the south- 
ward through Lake St. Clair, but through Georgian 
Bay, and thence by a channel occupying the site of the 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 



79 



Trent River to the northern part of Lake Ontario. 
At a yet later stage, when the ice barrier was still 
further withdrawn, so that the channel of the St. 
Lawrence was open, another channel was found by 
way of the Ottawa River, so that the upper lakes no 
longer emptied by way of Lake Ontario. 

After the ice passed completely away from this part 
of the country, the land recovered from its southward 
down-tilting. Lake Erie regained its waters, and the 
tide from Lakes Michigan and Huron began to flow, as 
at present, by way of the Detroit River and Lake St. 
Clair. This was probably the age when the present 
Niagara River came into existence. We have already 
noted the fact that as a whole the valley of the Niag- 
ara, both above and below the falls, appears to be a 
piece of stream-carving done in very modern times. 
Although it doubtless antedates the earliest chapters 
of human history of which we have any written records, 
it almost certainly is newer than the records of man 
which we find written in certain ancient art remains, 
such as those which were found with the Calaveras 
skull in CaUfornia. The stream may have begun its 
work not more than ten thousand years ago. It ap- 
pears, however, that there was a pre-glacial Niagara. 

If the reader will go to the chff which borders the 
lowland along the lake, a precipice carved at some 
period when Lake Ontario was higher than at present, 
and walk westward from the river, he will observe that at 



8o THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

the town of St. David's, a few miles west of Queens- 
ton, the cliffs turn inland in a way which indicates 
that here of old was a valley through which a great 
river found its way to the lake. Going southward to 
the site of the whirlpool we find there a point where, 
and where alone, the steep rocky walls of the Niagara 
canon fail, and their place is taken by heaps of drift 
material, evidently brought to its present site by the 
ice of the glacial time which here, as in many other re- 
gions, filled the pre-glacial valleys with detritus. In 
the opinion of those who have most attentively studied 
the problem, there was an old Niagara River extend- 
ing a part of its channel from St. David's to the whirl- 
pool, and probably from that point along much the 
same line as the present stream toward the existing 
falls. It is possible, however, that this old channel 
may have bent away to the west from the whirlpool, 
and attained Lake Erie at some unknown point. If 
the old channel entered the present Niagara gorge at 
the pool v/e have to assume that when the stream, long 
dispossessed by the glacier, was permitted again to flow, 
it found the channel to St. David's so completely filled 
that it was easier to plunge over the Queenston bluff 
at a new point, and thence in the retreat of the falls to 
carve the cafion back to its present site. It may be 
that a part of the channel above the enlargement at 
the whirlpool was also carved in the old pre-glacial 
days, filled in with glacial waste, and afterwards swept 
clear of the obstruction by the mighty stream. 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 8 1 

To the reader who has paid no attention to the 
geographic changes which were produced in the last 
ice time, such alterations in the path of a river may 
seem most improbable. The geologist, however, knows 
that these have been among the commoner incidents 
in this chapter of the earth's history. Hardly any of 
the considerable streams which existed within the g-la- 
ciated field before the advent of the ice escaped such 
perturbation. We could in an a prior e way predict 
that a stream lying in the position of the Niagara 
River, where the amount of glacial waste deposited on 
the surface was very great, would be so far effaced by 
detritus that when the tide again began to flow, a por- 
tion at least of its channel would depart from its prim- 
itive position. In fact, among the many detailed in- 
quiries which the geologist has a chance to make in the 
old glacial fields there are few which are more interest- 
ing and, indeed, more perplexing than these which 
concern the relation of the ancient and existing river 
valleys.. 

From this general and rather wide consideration of 
the Niagara problem, which has brought us in face of 
some of the majestic actions of the past, we may now 
profitably turn to the detailed phenomena exhibited in 
the Falls and in the gorge between them and Queens- 
ton. The student will do well to begin these inquir- 
ies by a journey to the Cave of the Winds, where, 
penetrating behind a thin strip of the falling water, he 
can see something of the condition of the steep over 



82 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

which the cataract plunges. He should also observe 
the rocks in the faces of the cliffs below the Falls. He 
will readily note the fact that the top of the precipice 
is occupied by a somewhat massive Hmestone. This 
rock is, it is true, divided by joints into large blocks, 
but these are hard, and are not much worn by the 
clean water which at the margin of the escarpment 
shoots clear of their face in the manner shown by the 
diagram. Below this limestone, which is extensively 
developed in New York and in the adjacent parts of 
the continent, and which most properly bears the name 
of" Niagara Limestone," there is a less considerable 
thickness of thin-layered shaley beds known as the 
" Niagara Shale." Yet below lie beds of the Clinton 
Age, composed of somewhat coherent limestone shales 
sandstones. . At the base of the section of the Falls and 
steep, occupying more than half of its height, are the 
beds of the Medina formation, mostly made up of 
rather frail sandstones and thin reddish shaley layers. 
From what the reader can see in the Cave of the 
Winds, and what he can readily infer by observing the 
rocks bared in the cliffs near the Falls, he will readily 
understand that the Niagara Limestone is the rock 
which takes the brunt of the work required in main- 
taining the precipice, down which its river plunges. 
He will see also that this hard edge of the cHff pro- 
jects beyond its base, thus giving free room for the 
fall to descend unbroken to the level of the stream 



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84 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 



below, and thence downward in the tumult of waters 
to the river bed to a greater depth than the visible 
face of the Falls. 

From time to time as abundant general observa- 
tions and accurate surveys show, the Niagara cornice 
of the wall is so far left unsupported by the more rapid 
wearing of the lower-lying softer beds that it breaks 
down by its own weight and falls in ruins to the base 
of the submerged cliff at the foot of the cascade. In 
this position we cannot see what becomes of the debris, 
but from what we may readily observe at other points 
we can make some interesting and trustworthy 
inferences. Along many rivers the student of such 
phenomena can find places where ancient cata- 
racts have left their bases bare by the shrinkage or 
diversion of the streams which produced them ; thus 
at Little Falls on the Mohawk, which, as before noted, 
was once the path of exit of the Great Lake waters, there 
was in the olden day a great cataract, the most of 
which is now above the level of the shrunken river. 
Here we find the rocks once trodden by the fall exca- 
vated in great well- like ** pot-holes," some of which 
are ten feet or more in diameter, and with more than 
that depth. Each of these cavities has evidently been 
carved out by the bits of hard rock which the stream 
brought into them, the fragments having been made to 
journey round and round in a circle, forming what is 
often a dome-shaped chamber, widening toward its 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 85 

base. Such whirling movements of water may be 
observed in a miniature way where a stream from a 
hydrant falls into a basin. The base of the Niagara 
cliff is doubtless under-cut in the manner above de- 
scribed, the graving tools being the hard fragments 
which fall from its upper parts. 

As we may behold in the Cave of the Winds, the 
whirlings of the water-laden air and jets of spray 
tend somewhat to soften and dissolve the layers of the 
shale, and thus to bring about that recession of the 
face which causes the limestone to jut beyond the base 
of the precipice. Beneath the level of the stream 
the violent swayings of the tormented water, beaten 
by the strokes of the Falls, doubtless serve yet more 
effectively to erode the soft rocks of the Medina 
formations. These actions co-operating with the pot- 
holing work keep the cliff ever retreating at its base 
at a little greater rate than at its summit, the limestone 
capstone falling only when the excavation beneath de- 
nies it effective support. In the above described fea- 
tures Niagara Falls are in no sense peculiar. There 
are probably within two hundred miles of their site 
over fifty cascades which have been engendered and 
maintained by the same simple conditions of an upper 
hard layer and lower-lying more easily worn strata. 
It should be remarked, however, that the greater the 
height down which the plunge of water takes place, 
and the larger its volume, the more vigorous is the 



S6 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

assault upon the base of the cliff through the develop- 
ment of pot-hole excavations and the lashing which 
the troubled waters apply to the rocks. But for the 
fact that the tide of Niagara, though of vast volume, is 
perfectly clean, the retreat of the Falls precipice 
towards Lake Erie would have been far more rapid 
than under the existing conditions. If, in place of the 
marvelously pure lake water the turbid stream of the 
Mississippi poured down this steep, the scouring action 
of the tumult beneath the fall would produce a vast in- 
crease of erosion. In these assumed conditions it 
might well be that the observer would find some sorry 
remnant of this great cascade far to the southward of 
its present position, perhaps within the limits of what 
is now Lake Erie. The difference in the effect of pure 
and turbid water, when forced against hard rocks may 
be judged by the fact that while a glass window may 
be washed with a hydrant stream for an indefinite pe- 
riod without mark of abrasion, a similar stream of very 
turbid water will in a short time bring about a notice- 
able scratching of the glass. 

We are now in a position to understand how it is 
that the Falls have cut their way back through the 
great distance which separates them from the Queens- 
ton bluff over which the river flowed when it was 
first made free to follow its present course. It is a fine 
tour of the imagination to conceive how in some day 
after the ice age, when the country had assumed the 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. C/ 

elevation and attitude which required the development 
of the second Niagara river, the waters broke over the 
barrier near Buffalo, sweeping across the gently sloping 
country to the Queenston cliffs, there plunging down 
in what was at first a broken cataract rather than a fall, 
into the lowlands about Ontario, or it may have been 
directly into the waters of the lake, then more elevated 
than now. Very quickly the undercutting process 
above described must have converted the cataract into 
a vertical fall. In a few score years the process of 
retreat of the steep over which the water fell must 
have begun the excavation of the great gorge. 
It may help th^ reader to conceive the advance of 
the process to imagine a great auger boring away 
upon some soft material, the tool while turning 
being drawn slowly across the surface. In the 
similitude, the whirling waters at the base of the 
cascade with their armament of stones, represents 
the auger, and the wide field of strata which have been 
carved the material which is bored by the moving tool. 
For many years geologists, who are ever trying to 
measure the duration of the past, have endeavored to 
compute the time which has elapsed since the excava- 
tion of the gorge below Niagara Falls began. It 
seemed at first likely that the time occupied in this 
great work might be reckoned in a somewhat definite 
way. Long ago it became evident that the Falls were 
slowly advancing up the river through the undermin- 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 89 

ing of their base and the consequent crumbling of the 
overhanging limestone at the foot of the precipice. In 
1842, Dr. James Hall made a careful map showing the 
position of the different parts of the Falls ^ which were 
referred to monuments from which subsequent surveys 
could do work that would afford a basis for compari- 
sons. A third of a century later another survey was 
made by officers of the U. S. Engineers. In 1886 Mr. 
R. S. Woodward made yet another careful map of the 
region. It now appears, however, according to Mr. 
G. K. Gilbert, that one or more of these delineations 
is somewhat in error, for at certain places the outline 
of the front projects beyond the position indicated by 
Hall's survey. After a careful consideration of these 
discrepancies, Mr. Gilbert says : *' Nevertheless a crit- 
ical study, not merely of the bare Hnes on the chart, 
but also of the fuller data in the surveyor's notes, leads 
to the belief that the rate of recession in the central 
part of the Horseshoe Fall is approximately determined, 
and that it is somewhere between four feet and six feet 
per annum. The amount of falling away at the sides 
of the Horseshoe is not well determined, but this is of 
less importance, for such falling away effects the width 
of the gorge rather than its length, and it is the length 
with which we are concerned." 

If we could assume that all the cutting of the gorge 
from the Falls to Queenston had been done since the 
•stage in the retreat of the ice sheet when the river, as 



go THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

we now know it, began to flow, it would seem to be an 
easy matter to make an approximate computation as to 
the length of time which had been required to effect 
the task. As yet, however, we must hesitate to make 
an assertion, and, following the example of Mr. Gil- 
bert, regard the problem as one which demands a far 
more careful study than it has as yet received before a 
judgment can properly be given. It is in a high de- 
gree improbable that the rate of retreat in the last forty 
years is anywhere near an average of the movement 
since the excavation of the canon began. Between the 
Falls and Queenston the rocks which have been cut 
through, though of a tolerably uniform nature, have here 
and there local peculiarities which may have greatly ac- 
celerated the rate at which the Falls have worked up- 
stream. The height of the Falls has altered in this 
movement, and it is very probable that the volume of 
water may have been subjected to considerable changes 
through the alterations of climate which have attended 
the passing away of the glacial sheet. In addition to 
these evident sources of error there are others con- 
nected with the irregular tilting movements of this part 
of the continent which, as before noticed, have per- 
turbed the drainage since the close of the time when 
the ice sheet lay over the basin of the St. Lawrence. 

At present it is tolerably safe to reckon the rate of re- 
treat of Niagara Falls at about five hundred feet in a cen- 
tury. The reader may, if he pleases, assume that this 



THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 



9 



is a fair measure of the speed with which the cascade 
has worked back from the Queenston escarpment ; 
but if he makes the computation he should regard it as 
amusing rather than instructive work. It is evident, 
however, that in the course of a thousand years the 
Fall is likely to be about a mile nearer Lake Erie than 
it is at present. 

It is most probable that long before this planet has 
dispensed with the presence of man, and before any 
geological or geographical changes have effaced this 
land, the question will have to be met whether our 
successors shall permit the recession of the Falls to 
bring about the draining of Lake Erie and the adjacent 
waters. In the illumination of that time, indeed we 
may say in the light of our own, it will not appear dif- 
ficult to arrest this natural development by which the 
recession of the cascade tends to drain away the lake 
from which its waters flow. New channels can be ex- 
cavated which will divert the stream to some point on 
the line of the canon where a fresh field of excavation 
can be provided for the cataract ; or if it seems worth 
while, an excavation can be made beneath the stream 
at a point above the Falls, and a hard masonry support 
provided for the Niagara limestone, which, as we have 
noted, forms the cornice over which the water plunges. 

If we may judge the motives of the future by those 
of the present, the decision as to the eventual fate of 
Niagara will rest upon economic considerations. Such 



g2 THE GEOLOGY OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

considerations, indeed, are likely in course of time, and 
that not long, to lead to the utilization of the vast 
amount of power which now goes to waste at this 
point. So long as the factory had to be placed near 
its water-wheel the demand for the energy of the Falls 
was not very insistent. If, however, as seems most 
likely, electricians devise means whereby the tide of 
force made available by this leap of waters can be 
carried, without too much loss, to points five hundred 
miles or- more away, we may find New York and 
Chicago, and a hundred other places, asking for a 
share of the energy which here goes to w^aste. It is 
indeed most likely that the arrest in the southward 
march of Niagara will be brought about by the diver- 
sion of its waters to the turbines which drive dynamos. 
The foregoing considerations may make it evident 
to the reader that Niagara Falls should not be viewed 
as a mere spectacle. They should be taken as majes- 
tic natural phenomena which throw light on many im- 
portant chapters in the history of our continent. It is 
indeed doubtful if at any other place in the world the 
mind stimulated by a majestic scene is so naturally led 
to inquiries full of learned as well as of human interest. 










Monday. — This new creature with the long hair is 
a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around 
and following me about. I don't like this ; I am not 
used to company. I wish it would stay with the 

other animals Cloudy to-day, wind in the 

east ; think we shall have rain. .... We f Where 
did I get that word ? . . . . I remember now,— the 
new creature uses it. 

Tuesday. — Been examining the great waterfall. It 
is the finest thing on the estate, I think. The new 
creature calls it Niagara Falls — why, I am sure I do 
not know. Says it looks like Niagara Falls. That is 
not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. 
I get no chance to name anything myself. The new 
creature names everything that comes along, before I 
can get in a protest. And always that same pretext 
is offered — it looks like the thing. There is the dodo, 
for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one 
sees at a glance that it *' looks like a dodo." It will 



94 EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 

have to keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to 
fret about it, but it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It 
looks no more like a dodo than I do. 

Wednesday. — Built me a shelter against the rain 
but could not have it to myself in peace. The ne 
creature intruded. When I tried to put it out it she 
water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away 
with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as 
some of the other animals make when they are in dis- 
tress. I wish it would not talk ; it is always talking. 
That sounds like a cheap fling at the poor crea- 
ture, a slur ; but I do not mean it so. I have never 
heard the human voice before, and any new and strange 
sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of 
these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a 
false note. And this new sound is so close to me ; 
it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one 
side and then on the other, and I am used only to 
sounds that are more or less distant from me. 

Friday. — The naming goes recklessly on, in spite 
of anything I can do. I had a very good name for 
the estate, and it was musical and pretty — Garden-of- 
Eden. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not 
any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all 
woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no re- 
semblance to a garden. Says it looks like a park, and 
does not look like anything but a park. Conse- 
quently, without coflsulting me it has been new 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY 95 

named — Niagara Falls Park. This is sufficiently 
high-handed, it seems to me. And already there is a 
sign up : 



KEEP OFF 
THE GRASS. 



My life is not as happy as it was. 

Saturday. — The new creature eats too much fruit. 
We are going to run short, most likely. '' We " 
again — that is its word ; mine, too, now, from hearing 
it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do 
not go out in the fog, myself. The new creature 
does. It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right 
in with its muddy feet. And talks. It used to be so 
pleasant and quiet here. 

Sunday. — Pulled through. This day is getting to 
be more and more trying. It was selected and set 
apart last November as a day of rest. I already had 
six of them per week before. This is another of those 
unaccountable things. There seems to be too much 
legislation, too much fussing, and fixing, and tidying- 
up, and not enough of the better-let-well-enough- 
alone policy. \Mein, — Must keep that sort of opinions 
to myself.] This morning found the new creature try- 
ing to clod apples out of that forbidden tree. 

Monday. — The new creature says its name is Eve. 
That is all right, I have no objections. Says it is to 



96 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 



call it by when I want it to come. I said it was su- 
perfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in its 
respect ; and indeed it is a large, good word and will 
bear repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. 
This is probably doubtful ; yet it is all one to me ; 
what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by 
herself and not talk. 

Tuesday. — She has littered the whole estate with 
execrable names and offensive signs : 

j|@=^This way to the Whirlpool. 
j|@^This way to Goat Island. 
'Cave of the Winds this way. 



She says this park would make a tidy summer re- 
sort, if there were any custom for it. Summer resort — 
another invention of hers — just words, without any 
meaning. What is a summer resort ? But it is best 
not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining. 

Friday. — She has taken to begging and imploring 
me to stop going over the Falls. What harm does it 
do ? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why ; I 
have always done it — always liked the plunge, and the 
excitement and the coolness. I supposed it was what 
the Falls were for. They have no other use that I 
can see, and they must have been made for something. 
She says they were only made for scenery — Hke the 
rhinoceros and the mastodon. 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 9/ 

I went over the Falls in a barrel — not satisfactory 
to her. Went over in a tub — still not satisfactory. 
Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. 
It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints 
about my extravagance. I am too much hampered 
here. What I need is change of scene. 

Saturday. — I escaped last Tuesday night, and 
traveled two days, and built me another shelter, in a 
secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as I 
could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast 
which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making 
that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of 
the plajces she looks with. I was obliged to return 
with her, but will presently emigrate again, when occa- 
sion offers. She engages herself in many foolish 
things : among others, trying to study out why the 
animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flow- 
ers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear 
would indicate that they were intended to eat each 
other. This is fooHsh, because to do that would be to 
kill each other, and that would introduce what, as I 
understand it, is called " death " ; and death, as I have 
been told, has not yet entered the Park. Which is a 
pity, on some accounts. 

Sunday. — Pulled through. 

Monday. — I believe I see what the week is for : it 
is to give time to rest up from the weariness of Sun- 
day. It seems a good idea, in a region where good 



g8 EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 

ideas are rather conspicuously scarce. \_Me7;i. — Must 
keep this sort of remarks private.] .... She has 
been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. 
She said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that 
a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous 
thing. Told her that. The word justification moved 
her admiration — and envy, too, I thought. It is a 
good word. 

Thursday. — She told me she was made out of a 
rib taken from my body. This is at least doubtful, if 
not more than that. I have not missed any rib. . . . 
She is in much trouble about the buzzard ; says grass 
does not agree with it ; is afraid she can't raise it ; 
thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The 
buzzard must, get along the best it can with what is 
provided. We cannot overturn the whole scheme to 
accommodate the buzzard. 

Saturday. — She fell in the pond yesterday, when 
she was looking at herself in it, which she is always 
doing. She nearly strangled, and said it was most un- 
comfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures 
which live in there, which she calls fish, for she con- 
tinues to fasten names on to things that don't need 
them and don't come when they are called by them, 
which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such 
a fool anyway ; so she got a lot of them out and 
brought them in and put them in my bed to keep 
warm, but I have noticed them now and theii all day 




The Horse-Shoe Falls from Goat Island. 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 99 

and I don't see that they are any happier there than 
they were before. When night comes I shall throw 
them outdoors. I will not sleep with them, for I find 
them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a 
person hasn't anything on. 

Sunday. — Pulled through. 

Tuesday. — She has taken up with a snake now. 
The other animals are glad, for she was always experi- 
menting with them and bothering them ; and I am 
glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to 
get a rest. 

Friday. — She says the snake advises her to try 
the fruit of that tree, and says the result will be a great 
and fine and noble education. I told her there would 
be another result, too — it would introduce death into 
the world. That was a mistake — it had been better to 
keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea 
— she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh 
meat to the despondent lions and tigers. I advised 
her to keep away from the tree. She said she wouldn't. 
I foresee trouble. Will emigrate. 

Wednesday. — I have had a variegated time. I 
escaped that night, and rode a horse all night as fast 
as he could go, hoping to get clear out of the Garden 
and hide in some other country before the trouble 
should begin ; but it was not to be. About an hour 
after sun-up, as I was riding through a flowery plain 
where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, 



lOO EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 

or playing with each other, according to their common 
wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of 
frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a 
frantic commotion and eveiy beast was destroying its 
neighbor. I knew what it meant — Eve had eaten that 

fruit, and death was come into the world 

The tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I 
ordered them to desist, and they would even have eaten 
me if I had stayed — which I didn't, but went away in 

much haste I found this place, outside the Garden, 

and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has 
found me out. Found me out, and has named the 
place Tonawanda — says it looks like that. In fact I 
was not sorry she came, for there are but meagre 
pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. 
Twas obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It was 
against my principles, but I find that principles have 
no real force except when one is well fed. . . . She 
came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and 
when I asked her what she meant by such nonsense, 
and snatched them away and threw them down, she 
tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter 
and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming 
and idiotic. She said I would soon know how it was 
myself This was correct. Hungry as I was, I laid 
down the apple half eaten — certainly the best one I 
ever saw, considering the lateness of the season — and 
arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. lOI 

and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered 
her to go and get some more and not make such a 
spectacle of herself. She did it, and after this we crept 
down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and 
collected some skins, and I made her patch together 
a couple of suits proper for public occasions. They 
are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is 
the main point about clothes. ... I find she is a 
good deal of a companion. I see I should be lone- 
some and depressed without her, now that I have lost 
my property. Another thing, she says it is ordered 
that we work for our living hereafter. She will be 
useful. I will superintend. 

Ten Days Later. — She accuses inc of being the 
cause of our disaster ! She says, with apparent sin- 
cerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the 
forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I 
said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any 
chestnuts. She said the Serpent informed her that 
'' chestnut " was a figurative term meaning an aged 
and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I have 
made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of 
them could have been of that sort, though I had hon- 
estly supposed they were new when I made them. 
She asked me if I had made one just at the time of the 
catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had made 
one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was 
thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, " How 



I02 EXTRACTS FROM ADAMS DIARY. 

wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble 
down there ! " Then in an instant a bright thought 
flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, '' It 
would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble 2cJ? 
there!" — and I was just about to kill myself with 
laughing at it when all nature broke loose in war and 
death and I had to flee for my life. " There," she 
said, with triumph, '* that is just it ; the Serpent men- 
tioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, 
and said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am 
indeed to blame. Would that I were not witty ; oh, 
would that I had never had that radiant thought ! 

Next Year. — We have named it Cain. She 
caught it while I was up country trapping on the 
North Shore of the Erie ; caught it in the timber a 
couple of miles from our dug-out — or it might have 
been four, she isn't certain which. It resembles us in 
some ways, and may be a relation. That is what she 
thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. The dif- 
ference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a dif- 
ferent and new kind of animal — a fish, perhaps, 
though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and 
she plunged in and snatched it out before there was 
opportunity for the experiment to determine the mat- 
ter. I still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about 
what it is, and will not let me have it to try. I do not 
understand this. The coming of the creature seems to 
have changed her whole nature and made her unrea- 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. 



103 



sonable about experiments. She thinks more of it than 
she does of any of the other animals, but is not able to 
explain why. Her mind is disordered — everything 
shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish in her arms 
half the night when it complains and wants to get to 
the water. At such times the water comes out of the 
places in her face that she looks out of, and she pats 
the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her 
mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude 
in a hundred ways. I have never seen her do like 
this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. 
She used to carry the young tigers around so, and 
play with them, before we lost our property, but it 
was only play ; she never took on about them like this 
when their dinner disagreed with them. 

SuNDAY.^She don't work, Sundays, but Hes 
around all tired out, and Hkes to have the fish wallow 
over her ; and she makes fool noises to amuse it, and 
pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. I 
have not seen a fish before that could laugh. This 
makes me doubt .... I have come to like Sunday 
myself. Superintending all the week tires a body so. 
There ought to be more Sundays. In the old days 
they were tough, but now they come handy. 

Wednesday. — It isn't a fish. I cannot quite make 
out what it is. It makes curious devilish noises when 
not satisfied, and says " goo-goo " when it is. It is 
not one of us, for it doesn't walk ; it is not a bird, for 



I04 EXTRACTS FROM ADAMS DIARY. 

it doesn't fly ; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop ; it is 
not a snake, for it doesn't crawl ; I feel sure it is not a 
fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether 
it can swim or not. It merely lies around, and mostly 
on its back, with its feet up. I have not seen any 
other animal do that before. I said I believed it was 
an enigma ; but she only admired the word without 
understanding it. In my judgment it is either an 
enigma or some kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take 
it apart and see what its arrangements are. I never 
had a thing perplex me so. 

Three Months Later. — The perplexity merely 
augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little. 
It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on 
its four legs^ now. Yet it differs from the other four- 
legged animals, in that its front legs are unusually 
short, consequently this causes the main part of its 
person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and 
this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but 
its method of travehng shows that it is not of our 
breed. The short front legs and long hind ones in- 
dicate that it is of the kangaroo family, but it is a 
marked variation of the species, since the true kangaroo 
hops, whereas this one never does. Still it is a curious 
and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued 
before. As I discovered it, I have felt justified in se- 
curing the credit of the discovery by attaching my 
name to it, and hence have called it Kangaroonun Adam- 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAM S DIARY. IO5 

iensis. .... It must have been a young one when 
it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. It must 
be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when 
discontented is able to make from twenty-two to thirty- 
eight times the noise it made at first. Coercion does 
not modify this, but has the contrary effect. For this 
reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles it 
by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had 
told it she wouldn't give it before. As observed pre- 
viously, I was not at home when it first came, and she 
told me she found it in the woods. It seems odd that 
it should be the only one, yet it must be so, for I have 
worn myself out these many weeks trying to find 
another one to add to my collection, and for this one 
to play with ; for surely then it would be quieter and 
we could tame it more easily. But I find none, nor 
any vestige of any ; and strangest of all, no tracks. It 
has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself; there- 
fore, how does it get about without leaving a track ? 
I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I 
catch all small animals except that one ; animals that 
merely go into the trap out of curiosity, I think, to see 
what the milk is there for. They never drink it. 

Three Months Later. — The Kangaroo still con- 
tinues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. 
I never knew one to be so long getting its growth. 
It has fur on its head now ; not like kangaroo fur, but 
exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and 



I06 EXTRACTS FROM ADAM's DIARY. 

softer, and instead of being black is red. I am like 
to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing 
developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. 
If I could catch another one — but that is hopeless ; it is 
a new variety, and the only sample ; this is plain. But 
I caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking 
that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that 
for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it 
could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its 
forlorn condition here among strangers who do not 
know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it feel 
that it is among friends ; but it was a mistake — it went 
into such fits at the sight of the kangaroo that I was 
convinced it had never seen one before. I pity the 
poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do 
to make it happy. If I could tame it^but that is out 
of the question ; the more I try the worse I seem to 
make it. It grieves me to the heart to see it in its 
little storms of sorrow and passion. I wanted to let 
it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. That seemed cruel 
and not like her ; and yet she may be right. It might 
be lonelier than ever ; for since I cannot find another 
one, how could it? 

Five Months Later. — It is not a kangaroo. 
No, for it supports itself by holding to her finger, and 
thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then falls 
down. It is probably some kind of a bear ; and yet it 
has no tail — as yet — and no fur, except on its head. 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAMS DIARY. lO/ 

It still keeps on growing — that is a curious circum- 
stance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. 
Bears are dangerous — since our catastrophe — and I 
shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about 
the place much longer without a muzzle on, I have 
offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one 
go, but it did no good — she is determined to run us 
into all sorts of foolish risks, I think. She was not 
Hke this before she lost ner mind. 

A Fortnight Later. — I examined its mouth. 
There is no danger yet ; it has only one tooth. It has 
no tail yet. . It makes more noise now than it ever did 
before — and mainly at night. I have moved out. But 
I shall go over, mornings, to breakfast, and to see if it 
has more teeth. If it gets a mouthful of teeth it will 
be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a bear does not 
need a tail in order to be dangerous. 

Four Months Later. — I have been off hunting 
and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls 
Buffalo ; I don't know why, unless it is because there 
are not any buffalos there. Meantime the bear has 
learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, 
and says " poppa " and " momma." It is certainly a 
new species. This resemblance to words may be 
purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose 
or meaninsf ; but even in that case it is still extraordi- 
nary, and is a thing which no ' other bear can do. 
This imitation of speech, taken together with general 



I08 EXTRACTS FROM ADAMS DIARY. 

absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently in- 
dicates that this is a new kind of bear. The further 
study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime 
I . will go off on a far expedition among the forests of 
the north and make an exhaustive search. There 
must certainly be another one somewhere, and this one 
will be less dangerous when it has company of its own 
species. I will go straightway ; but I will muzzle this 
one first. 

Three Months Later. — It has been a weary, 
weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In the mean- 
time, without stirring from the home-estate, she has 
caught another one ! I never saw such luck. I 
might have hunted these woods a hundred years, I 
never would have run across that thing. 

Next Day. — I have been comparing the new one 
with the old one, and it is perfectly plain that they are 
the same breed. I was going to stuff one of them for 
my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some 
reason or other ; so I have relinquished the idea, though 
I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss 
to science if they should get away. The old one is 
tamer than it was, and can laugh and talk like the 
parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with 
the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in 
a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it 
turns out to be a new kind of parrot ; and yet I ought 
not to be astonished, for it has already been every- 



EXTRACTS FROM ADAMS DIARY. IO9 

thing else it could think of, since those first days when 
it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now as the old 
one was at first ; has the same sulphur-and-raw- 
meat complexion and the same singular head without 
any fur on it. She calls it Abel. 

Ten Years Later. — They are boys ; we found it 
out long ago. It was their coming in that small, im- 
mature shape that fooled us ; we were not used to it. 
There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but 
if Cain had stayed a bear it would have improved him. 
After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about 
Eve in the beginning ; it is better to live outside the 
Garden with her than inside it without her. At first 
I thought she talked too much ; but now I should be 
sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my 
life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near to- 
gether and taught me to know the goodness of her 
heart and the sweetness of her spirit ! 







^^^^^s^ 



IC 




THE earliest description in literature of the Falls 
of Niagara was made by the Priest and His- 
torian (?) Father Hennepin, the associate of the explorer 
La Salle, who built in 1679 the Griffin, to which ap- 
pertains the honor of being the first vessel to sail the 
Great Lakes. 

The reference is entitled " A description of the 
Fall of the River Niagara which is to be seen betwixt 
the Lake Ontario and that of Erie." 

We give the commonly accepted version : 
'' Betwixt the Lake Ontario and Erie, there is a vast 
and prodigious Cadence of Water, which falls down 
after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch 
that the Universe does not afford its parallel. 
'Tis true, Italy and Suedeland boast of some such 
things ; but we may well say they are but sorry pat- 
terns, when compared to this of which we now speak. 
At the foot of this horrible Precipice, we meet with 
the River Niagara, which is not above a quarter of a 
league broad, but is wonderfully deep in some places. 
It is so rapid above this Descent, that it violently hur- 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. I I I 

ries down the wild beasts while endeavoring to pass it 
to feed on the other side, they not being able to with- 
stand the force of its Current, which inevitably casts 
them headlong above Six Hundred feet high.^ 

" This wonderful Downfall is compounded of two 
cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an isle 
sloping along the middle of it. The waters which fall 
from this horrible Precipice, do foam and boyl after the 
most hideous manner imaginable ; making an outrage- 
ous noise, more terrible than that of Thunder ; for when 
the wind blows out of the South, their dismal roaring 
may be heard rnore than Fifteen Leagues off. 2 

'' The River Niagara having thrown itself down this 
incredible Precipice, continues its impetuous course for 
Two Leagues together, to the great Rock above-men- 
tioned, with inexpressible rapidity. But having passed 
that, its impetuosity relents, gliding along more gently 
for the other Two Leagues, till it arrives at the Lake 
Ontario or Frontenac. 

'* Any Bark or greater Vessel may pass from the 
Fort to the foot of this huge Rock above-mentioned. 
This Rock lies to the Westward, and is cut off from 
the Land by the River Niagara about Two Leagues 
further down than the great Fall, for which Two Lea- 
gues the people are obliged to transport their goods 

1. ! ! ! This is too many ''feet high." It was necessary, that it might 
be seen from the shores of France. 

2. ! ! ! ' It was a long way to France and facts were made to correspond 
on account of the perspective. 



112 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

overland ; but the way is very good ; and the Trees 
are very few, chiefly Firrs and Oakes. 

'' From the great Fall unto this Rock, which is to 
the West of the River, the two brinks of it are so pro- 
digious high, that it would make one tremble to look 
steadily upon the water, rolling along with a rapidity 
not to be imagined* Were it not for this vast Catar- 
act, which interrupts Navigation, they might sail with 
Barks or greater Vessels, more than Four Hundred and 
Fifty Leagues, crossing the Lake of Hurons, and 
reaching even to the farther end of the Lake of Illin is, 
which two Lakes we may easily say are little Seas of 
fresh Water." 

There are other accounts by Tonti, Hontan and 
other early voyagers, but they are not especially to the 
purpose of this recital. 

At the beginning of the present century, there 
limped, with an ankle sprained, to the shores of Lake 
Erie, from the borders of the forest a young English- 
man, whose tastes and conceit were in strong contrast 
to the primitive simplicity of the scene on which he 
entered. 

Perhaps no greater tribute has ever been paid to 
the charm of the Falls of Niagara than is suggested by 
the fact that they reconciled the mind of Tom Moore 
to the disgusting experiences of travel in America, 
where to his thinking the promiscuous hudling to- 
gether of all sorts of people in the stagecoaches 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. II 3 

was a symbol of the mixed character of a Republican 
Government. A man who had been petted by an in- 
dulgent family and flattered by a social circle, which 
sang his songs and laughed at his wit, found the un- 
settled society of the New World not easy to adjust to 
his fastidious taste ; he had done us the honor to 
look over our Country, and had done it up in his 
letters as *' an interesting world, which with all the 
defects and disgusting peculiarities of its natives, gives 
every promise of no very distant competition with the 
first powers of the Eastern hemisphere." 

When the Valleys of the Mohawk and the Gene- 
see had been traversed, Moore was so much touched 
by their natural beauty that he exclaims : '* Such 
scenery as there is around me ! it is quite dreadful 
that any heart, born for sublimities, should be doomed 
to breathe away its hours amidst the miniature pro- 
ductions of this world, without seeing what shapes na- 
ture can assume, what wonders God can give birth to.'* 

But he had not yet seen the Falls. He is about 
to start upon his journey to the Falls of Niagara in a 
wagon. On July 2 2d he sends back by the driver 
of the wagon a letter to be forwarded to his mother, 
written from upper Chippewa : '* Just arrived within a 
mile and a half of the Falls of Niagara, and their tre- 
mendous roar at this moment sounding in my ears." 
Two days later he writes : *' I have seen the Falls, 
and am all rapture and amazement. . . . Arrived 



114 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

at Chippewa within three miles of the Falls to dinner 
Saturday, July 2ist. That evening walked toward 
the Falls, but got no further than the Rapids, which 
gave us a prelibation of the grandure we had to 
expect. ^ 

''Next day, Sunday, July 22d, went to visit the 
Falls .^ Never shall I forget the impressions I felt at the 
first glimpse of them which we got as the carriage 
passed over the hill that overlooks them. We were 
not near enough to be agitated by the terrific effects 
of the scene ; but saw through -the trees this mighty 
flow of waters descending with calm magnificence, and 
received enough of its grandure to set imagination on 
the wing ; imagination which even at Niagara can 
outrun reality .3 

* I felt as if approaching the very residence of the 
Deity ; the tears started into my eyes ; and I remained 
for moments after we had lost sight of the scene, in 
that delicious absorption which pious enthusiasm alone 
can produce. We arrived at the New Ladder and de- 

1. " Prelibations" are no longer to be had in the neighborhood of the Rap- 
ids; we mention this to save disappointment to any tourists who may inquire 
for them. 

2. The Falls still fall on Sunday ; no mention was included as to the Falls 
of Niagara in the petition to Congress respectiug the Sunday-closing of the 
Exposition. The Falls ran nearly dry in 1848, but this was not due to any Act 
of Congress or to sympathy with the French Revolution, but was caused by an 
ice gorge at the outlet of Lake Erie. 

3. This has not been the experience of the greater poets, Lowell, x^ong- 
fellow and Bryant, none of whom have tried to describe the Falls in poetry ; 
but the remark about imagination was made by Tom Moore in 1804, when 
imagination was stronger than it is now. 



I 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. I I 5 

scended to the bottom. Here all its awful sublimities 
rushed full upon me. But the former exquisite sensa- 
tion was gone. I now saw all. The string that had 
been touched by the first impulse, and which fancy 
would have kept forever in vibration, now rested at 
Reality. Yet though there was no more to imagine, 
there was much to feel. My whole heart and soul 
ascended toward the Divinity in a swell of devout 
admiration, which I never before experienced. . . . 
Oh ! bring the Atheist here, and he cannot return an 
Atheist!^-" 

The chief value of these attempts at description is 
not in that they do describe or fail to describe this 
natural phenomenon, but that they do describe the 
mind of the beholder ; for it is ever a fact that when 
a great subject is dealt with by the human mind we 
get a double lesson; if the mind be competent we get 
a description of the subject, but in any event we get a 
portrait of the mind. In no instance does this more 
appear than in the contrasting way in which Niagara 
claimed the attention of three noted women : Mrs. 
Jameson, Harriet Martineau and Margaret Fuller. One 
would suppose that Mrs. Jameson's sense of beauty in 



I. This is a miscalculation of human powers of resistance ; Col. Robert 
Ingersoll has been to the Falls recently and expressed disapproval of them ; 
he seemed to think that no really kind Being- would turn loose such a quantity 
of water at once, and shock the human mind so rudely ; he then turned his 
back on the Falls, and meditated on the anniversary of the birth of Lincoln, 
which he had spoken upon the day before. Those who accompanied the 
Colonel had some difficulty in fitting Abraham Lincoln into a World of Acci- 
dents. But they v^^ere only foolish people who believed in God. 



Il6 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

Art would have prepared her mind for at least an 
ecstasy ; or was it that her mind already winged for 
the flights of imagination, and used to dealing with 
art-forms in the galleries of Europe, did not find it 
easy to place itself en rapport with a canvas so large, 
as that on which the beauties of Niagara are painted 
by an unseen hand, in colors which are never two 
moments alike. Whatever may be the psychological 
reason, it is necessary to relate that Mrs, Jameson 
would rather not have seeji Niagara. It was in 1837 
that her visit was made to the Falls in the last part of 
January of that year. When she had stood face to face 
with them she exclaims : '' Well, I have seen these 
cataracts of Niagara which have thundered in my 
mind's ear ever since I can remember — which have 
been my childhood's thought, my youth's desire, since 
first my imagination was awakened to wonder and to 
wish. I have beheld them ; and shall I whisper it to 
you ? — but, O tell it not among the Philistines ! — I 
wish I had not ! I wish they were still a thing to 
behold — a thing to be imagined, hoped, and antici- 
pated — something to live for — the reality has displaced 
from my mind an illusion far more magnificent than 
itself.^ — I have no words for my disappointment, yet I 
have not the presumption to suppose that all I have 
heard and read of Niagara is false or . exaggerated^ — 

1. Later on we will see that in the estimation of magicians, like Haw- 
thorne, it is advisable to go to the Falls after leaving our imaginations at home. 

2. Nothing except the first measurements and the early geological guesses 
and most of the poetry and all of the pictures, except those in this volume. 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 11/ 

that every expression of astonishment, enthusiasm, 
rapture, is affectation or hyperbole. No ! it must be 
my own fault. Terni, and some of the Swiss cataracts 
leaping from their mountains, have affected me a 
thousand times more than all the immensity of 
Niagara. Oh, I could beat myself! and now there is 
no help ! — the first moment, the first impression, is 
over — is lost ; something is gone that cannot be 
restored. What has come over my soul and senses ? 
I am no longer Anna — I am metamorphosed — I am 
translated — I am an ass's head, a clod, a wooden 
spoon, a fat weed growing on Lethe's bank, a stock, a 
stone, a petrifaction, — for have I not seen Niagara, the 
wonder of wonders ; and felt — no words can tell zvJiat 
disappointment !" 

The fact is, Mrs. Jameson had seen her Swiss 
cataracts to so little purpose that she seemed to be 
gazing into the sky for the beginning of the Falls 
of Niagara, and was surprised, when looking out from 
a high hill, to find that they were below her. She 
says : '' My Imagination had been so impressed by 
the vast height of the Falls, i that I was constantly 
looking in an upward direction, when, as we came to 
the brow of the hill, my companion suddenly checked 
the horses, and exclaimed, ' The Falls !' I was not for 
an instant aware of their presence ; we were yet at a 
distance looking down upon them ; and I saw at one 

I. Father Hennepin's " 600 feet,'' probably. 



Il8 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

glance a flat extensive plain ; the sun having with- 
drawn its beams for a moment, there was neither Hght 
nor shade, nor colour. In the midst were seen the 
two great cataracts, but merely as a feature in the 
wide landscape.* The sound was by no means over- 
powering.^ And the clouds of spray which Fannie 
Butler called so beautifully the '* everlasting incense of 
the waters," now condensed, 'ere they rose, by the 
excessive cold, fell round the base of the cataracts in 
fleecy folds, just concealing that furious embrace of the 
waters above, and the waters below. ^ All the associ- 
ations which in imagination I had gathered round the 
scene, its appalling terrors, its soul-subduing beauty, 
power, and height, and velocity, and immensity, were 
all diminished in effect, or wholly lost. I was quite 
silent — my soul sank within me." It would seem 
from the account of Mrs. Jameson that she had a most 
practical mind, for she was evidently delighted by the 
fact that a '' little Yankee boy, with a shrewd sharp 
face, and twinkling black eyes, could not palm off a 
flock of gulls on her for eagles." The one sense of 
comfort that visited her arises from the fact that 

1. That minimizing word "merely" has not often found place in the 
Niagara vocabulary. 

2. "The roar of Niagara," as it is called, is the mellow chord of the full 
organ (see article in Scribner's Magazine by Eugene Thayer), and people who 
have expected to be deafened by a kind of Infinite Factory are surprised to 
find that they have no trouble in conversing together. 

3. We shall see, however, later, that this which seemed an additional dis- 
appointment to Mrs. Jameson impressed Anthony TroUope as the most beauti- 
ful of all the Niagara phenomena. 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. II9 

though the Falls were not complementary to her mood, 
the smart boy was complimentary to her smartness, 
saying, " Well, now you be dreadful smart — smarter 
than many folks that come here." She tried the Falls 
from every point and found them from every 
point of view equally trying, and confesses at last, 
'* The Falls did not make on my mind the impression 
that I had anticipated, perhaps for that reason, even 
because I had anticipated it ; but ' it was sung to me in 
my cradle,' as the Germans say, that I should live to 
be disappointed — even in the Falls of Niagara."^ 

No two women could have been more unlike than 
Mrs. Jameson and Margaret Fuller, and yet one is 
haunted with the feeling that although Mrs. Jameson 
has so eloquently described " Art, sacred and legen- 
dary," Margaret Fuller was no less than Mrs. Jame- 
son a soul sensitive to all influences in Art ; but she 
lifts her eyes to the great Cataract and sees it by the 
light that fell from the mysterious and sacred center 
of her own impenetrable soul. She says^ " The spec- 
tacle is, for once, great enough to fill the whole life, 
and supersede thought, giving us only its own pres- 
ence. ' It is good to be here ' is the best as it is the 
simplest expression that occurs to the mind." Was 

1, When foreigners cross the Atlantic they ought not to get the id<:a that 
Niagara is the Atlantic set on edge : and yet advice seems useless, for our 
aesthetic fnend and epigramatic dramatist, Oscar Wilde, found the Atlantic 
disappointing. It is difficult to adjust the Atlantic and Niagara to certain 
types of mind. But as St. Paul remarks, " This is a great mystery." 

2. At Home and Abroad, or Things and Thoughts in America and Europe. 



I20 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

it a lingering, half-conscious recollection that that 
phrase is a part of the story of The Transfiguration/ 
that she immediately adds : '' We have been here 
eight days?" She says, further : ''So great a sight' 
soon satisfies, makings us content with itself and with 
what is less than itself. Our desires once realized, 
haunt us again less readily. Having ' lived one day,' 
we would depart and become worthy to live another. 
My nerves too much braced up by such an atmosphere, 
do not well bear the continual stress of sight and 
sound. For here there is no escape from the weight 
of perpetual creation ; all other forms and motions 
come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at 
its mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but there is 
really an incessant, an indefatigable motion. Awake 
or asleep, there is no escape ; still this rushing round 
you and through you. It is in this way I have most 
felt the grandeur — -something eternal, if not infinite. 

" At times a secondary music arises ; the Cataract 
seems to seize its own rythm and sing it over again so 
that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibra- 
tion. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes 
to the thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving 
the effect of a spiritual repetition through all the 
spheres."'^ 

1. Luke, ix ; 28. 

2. This is that range of the full-organ again, to which Mr. Thayer's sug- 
gestive article upon the music of Niagara Falls refers. 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 121. 

Margaret Fuller speaks of Niagara as "the one ob- 
ject in the world that would not disappoint."^ 

She says of the Falls : '' Daily their proportions 
widened ,and towered upon my sight, and I got, at 
last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. 
Before coming away I think I really saw the full won- 
der of the scene. After a while it so drew me into 
itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never 
knew before, such as may be felt when death is about 
to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual 
trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that 
no other sound, however near, could be heard, and 
would start and look behind me for a foe. I realized 
the identity of that mood of nature in which these 
waters were poured down with absorbing force, with 
that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil." 
There is a touch of nature in Margaret Fuller's 
confession, '' The Whirlpool I like very much." She 
was quite capable of making her friends feel that she 
could be as " sternly solemn," as impenetrable to the 
eye, as the Whirlpool itself. The poetic side of her 
nature was satisfied with the beautiful forest on Goat 
Island and that wealth of wild flowers of which it was 
said by Sir Joseph Hooker, that more varieties were 
to be found on Goat Island than anywhere else in 
America in the same expanse of wild wood. 

I. It was easier for people " to get on " with Mrs. Jameson; but there 
was something about'Niagara that found in Margaret Fuller a congenial ex- 
pansiveness; and perheps it required something like Niagara to make her 
properly expand. 



,122 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

Harriet Martineau's impressions were derived from 
a point not described by either of the other women be- 
fore named. It was on her second visit to Niagara 
that we have from her a description of her sensations 
in passing behind the American Fall. 

Miss Martineau says : " From the moment that I 
perceived that we were actually behind the Cataract, 
and not in a mere cloud of spray, the enjoyment was 
intense. I not only saw the watery curtain before me like 
the tempest-driven snow, but by momentary glances 
could see the crystal roof of one of the most wonder- 
ful of Nature's palaces. The precise point at which 
the flood quitted the rock was marked by a gush of 
silvery Hght, which of course was brighter where the 
waters were shooting forward, than below where they 
fell perpendicularly." She then describes quite graph- 
ically her successful effort to reach Termination Rock. 
It would be difficult to imagine Miss Martineau see- 
ing the end of her journey, and not rcacJdng it. 

We turn now to another English mind, interested 
in an intense way in human welfare, interested as Miss 
Martineau was, but how different in the expression of 
that interest ! It is a strange contrast which it exhibits 
in presence of the great flood. 

The mind that created Mr. Pickwick and David 
Copperfield will have something to say original even 
about Niagara. But Dickens was at heart a poet. His 
Fiction was perhaps exaggeration of the facts, but the 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 1 23 

facts were forever fixed by it ; and brought face to face 
With Nature in such aspects as make the mighty Cata- 
ract we should expect to have called out from his soul 
that religious response which mystery and majesty 
never failed to evoke; and we are not disappointed. 
He says : " Whenever the train halted I hstened for 
the roar, and was constantly straining my eyes in the 
direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing 
the river rolling on toward them ; every moment ex- 
pecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of 
our stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds 
rising up slowly and majestically from the depths of 
the earth. That was all. At length we alighted and 
then for the first time I heard the mighty rush of 
water, and felt the ground tremble under my feet." 
He climbed down the steep and shppery bank, made 
insecure to the foot by rain and half-melted ice, to face 
the Fall, but was not content with this view. A little 
ferry-boat that then plied from one side to the other 
carried him and his party across the river below the 
Fall, while he was more and more astounded by the 
vastness of the scene. He says : " It was not until I 
came on Table Rock, and looked, Great Heaven ! on 
what a fall of bright green water — that it came upon 
me in its full majesty. Then when I felt how near to my 
Creator I was standing, the first effect, and the endur- 
ing one, instant and lasting, of the tremendous spectacle, 
was peace. Peace of mind, tranquility, calm recollec- 



124 FAMOUS VISITORS AT . THE FALLS. 

tions of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and 
happiness ; nothing of gloom or terror. Niagara was 
at once stamped upon my heart, an image of beauty, 
to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its 
pulses cease to beat, forever. I never stirred in all 
that time from the Canadian side whither I had gone 
at first. I never crossed the river again ; for I knew 
there were people on the other shore, and in such a 
place it is natural to shun strange company. ' To 
wander to and fro all day and see the Cataracts from 
all points of view ; to stand upon the edge of the Great 
Horse Shoe Fall, marking the hurried water gathering 
strength as it approached the verge, yet seeming, too, 
to pause before it shot into the gulf below ; to gaze 
from the river's level up at the torrent as it came 
streaming down ; to climb the neighboring heights and 
watch it through the trees, and see the wreathing water 
in the rapids, hurrying on to take its fearful plunge ; 
to linger in the shadow of the solemn rocks three miles 
below, watching the river as, stirred by no visible 
cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the echoes, be- 
ing troubled yet far down beneath the surface, by its 
giant leap ; to have Niagara before me, lighted by the 
sun and the moon, red in the day's decline, and grey as 
evening slowly fell upon it ; to look upon it every day, 
and wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice, 

I. The contrast in this particular between Dickens and N. P. Willis opens 
up an interesting chapter in the natural differences in literary temperament, 
as It deals with human life. 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 1 25 

this was enough. I think, in every quiet season now, 
still do those waters roll and leap and roar and tumble, 
all day long ; still are the rainbows spanning them a 
hundred feet below. Still when the sun is on them do 
they shine and glow like molten gold. Still when the 
day is gloomy, do they fall Hke snow, or seem to 
crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or 
roll down the rock Hke dense white smoke. But al- 
ways does this mighty stream appear to die as it comes 
down, and always from its unfathomable grave arises 
that tremendous ghost of spray andjnist, which is never 
laid ; which has haunted this place with the same dread 
solemnity since darkness brooded on the Deep, and 
that first flood before the Deluge — Light — came rush- 
ing on Creation at the word of God." 

Nothing could be more characteristic of that 
strange commingling of wonder and reserve in a hu- 
man nature than the way in which Hawthorne came 
toward, and yet not quite to the Falls again and 
again. He says : **I had lingered away from it and 
wandered to other scenes. My treasury of anticipated 
enjoyments comprising all the wonders of the world 
had nothing else so magnificent ; I was loathe to 
exchange the pleasures of hope for those of memory 
so soon." There was nothing of the severe Yankee 
temperament in Hawthorne's attitude toward this great 
scene ; it was rather that infusion of French self-indul- 
gence which made him dread to count a delight, as a 



126 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

thing he liad had. He says : '* At length the day 
came, I walked toward Goat Island and crossed the 
bridge ; above and below me were the rapids, a river 
of impetuous snow, with here and there a dark rock 
amid its whiteness, resisting all the physical fury as 
any cold spirit did the moral influences of the scene." 
We rnay go with Hawthorne along the path if we 
will. ** On reaching Goat Island, which separates the 
two great segments of the Falls, I chose the right 
hand path and followed it to the edge of the American 
Cascade ; there, while the falling sheet was yet invisible, 
I saw the vapor that never vanishes and the eternal 
rainbow of Niagara. I gained an insulated rock and 
observed a broad sheet of brilliant and unbroken foam, 
not shooting in a curved line from the top of the preci- 
pice, but falling headlong down from height to depth." 
When Hawthorne had made the round of the Island 
and h3.d seen the Falls from every available coi7z of 
vantage, he stops, as was his custom, to take an ac- 
count of his mental sensations. ** Were my long de- 
sires fulfilled, and have I seen Niagara ? But would I 
had never heard of Niagara until I beheld it ! Blessed 
were the wanderers of old, who heard its deep roar 
sounding through the woods, as a summons to its un- 
known wonder, and approached its awful brink in all 
the freshness of native feeling ; had its own mysterious 
voice been the first to warn me of its existence, then 
indeed, I might have fallen down and worshipped ; but 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 12/ 

I had come haunted with a vision of foam aud fury 
and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down out of 
the sky — a scene, in short, which nature had too much 
good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My mind 
had struggled to adapt these false aspects to the real- 
ity, and finding the effort vain, a wretched sense of 
disappointment weighed me down. I climbed the 
precipice and threw myself on the earth feeling that I 
was unworthy to look at the great Falls and careless 
about observing them again." It would be strange, 
indeed, if the author of '' Twice-Told-Tales " did not 
find some '' wonder " in this repetition to him in other 
terms of that which he had already imagined. So 
he says of the night, which succeeded this first day- 
visit : "As there has been, and may be for ages 
to come, a rushing sound was heard, as if a great 
tempest was sweeping through the air. It mingled in 
my dreams and made them full of storm and whirl- 
wind. Whenever I awoke I heard this dread sound 
in the air, and the windows rattling as with a mighty 
blast. I could not rest again until, looking forth, I 
saw how bright the stars were and that every leaf in 
the garden was motionless. Never was summer night 
more calm to the eye, nor a gale of autumn louder to 
the ear. The rushing sound proceeds from the Rapids 
and the rattling of the casements is but an effect of 
the vibration of the whole house shaken by the jar of 
the Cataract. The noise of the Rapids draws the at- 



128 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

tention from the true voice of Niagara, which is a dull 
muffled thunder, resounding between the cliffs. I spent 
a wakeful hour at midnight in distinguishing between 
its reverberations, and rejoiced to find that my former 
awe and enthusiasm were reviving. 

** Gradually and after much contemplation, I came 
to know by my own feelings that Niagara is indeed a 
wonder of the world ; and not the less wonderful 
because time and thought must be employed in com- 
prehending it." And here follows the sanest advice to 
those who have felt at first the sense of disappointment 
that the cataract is not so great as they had conceived : 
*' Casting aside all preconceived notions and prepara- 
tion to be awe-struck or dehghted, the beholder must 
stand beside it in the simplicity of his heart, suffering 
the mighty scene to work its own impression. Night 
after night I dreamed of it, and was gladdened every 
morning by the sensations of growing capacity to en- 
joy it." 

This description by Hawthorne, from which these 
brief quotations have been made, contains nothing 
truer to a fine nature than that in which he states his 
last impressions of the Falls: " I sat upon Table Rock; 
never before had my mind been in such perfect unison 
with the scene. There were intervals when I was con- 
scious of nothing but the great river rolling calmly 
into the abyss ; rather descending than precipitating 
itself, and acquiring ten-fold majesty from its unhurried 







The Whirlpool Rapids— The Cantilever Bridge Above. 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 1 29 

motion. It came like the march of destiny ; it was 
not taken by surprise, but seemed to have anticipated 
in all its course through the broad lakes that it must 
pour their collected waters down this height." The 
impression made by the water where it falls is noted 
by Hawthorne and by few besides — the stillness with 
which it slips away from the stroke of the cataract, 
seeming scarcely to move in its eddies, which are only 
the slight surface-struggle of the great depth of 
waters in the narrow gorge into which it falls. He 
says of this : '' When the observer has stood still and 
perceived no lull in the storm and stress, that the 
vapor and the foam are as everlasting as the rock 
which produces them, all this turmoil assumes a sort 
of calmness ; it soothes while it awes the mind." 

Hawthorne is quite right in feeling that Niagara 
cannot be seen '' in company " or worshipped by pla- 
toons ; for one wants to steal to some unobserved 
retreat from which to look out and feel, as he says, 
'' The enjoyment which becomes rapture, more rap- 
turous because no poet shared it, nor wretch devoid 
of poetry profaned it ; the spot so famous through the 
world was all mine." This same feeling was shared 
by Charles Kingsley. He says : '* I long to simply 
look on in silence whole days at the exquisite beauty 
of form and color." 

To Dean Stanley the first sight of the Falls seemed 
" an epoch, like the first view of the pyramids, or the 



130 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

snow-clad range of the Alps." His first view of it 
was at midnight under a full moon. To him it seemed 
an '' emblem of the devouring activity and ceaseless, 
restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United 
States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a 
cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, 
silent, majestic, immovable. In that silver column, 
glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the 
future of American destiny, of the pillar of light which 
should emerge from the distractions of the present — a 
Hkeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which char- 
acterises you, both as individuals and as a nation." 

Professor Tyndall's mind has not been robbed of 
its sentiment by the minute contemplation of incident 
and detail, as Darwin suffered an atrophy in the ap- 
preciation of poetry as he himself confesses. It is to 
Professor Tyndall we owe this bit of poetic prose in 
which he describes the Whirlpool : '' The scene pre- 
sented itself as one of holy seclusion and beauty. I 
went down to the water's edge where the weird lone- 
liness and loveliness seems to increase. The basin 
is enclosed by high and almost precipitous banks, 
covered, when I was there, with russet woods. A 
kind of mystery attaches to gyrating water, due per- 
haps to the fact that we are to some extent ignorant 
of the direction of its force. It is said that at a cer- 
tain point in the whirlpool pine trees are sucked down 
to be ejected mysteriously elsewhere. The water is 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. I3I 

the brightest emerald green ; the gorge through which 
it escapes is narrow and the motion of the river swift 
though silent ; the surface is steeply inclined but it is 
perfectly unbroken. There are no lateral waves, no 
ripples, with their breaking bubbles to raise a murmur, 
while the depth is here too great to allow the in- 
equality of the bed to ruffle the surface. Nothing 
can be more beautiful than this sloping, liquid mirror 
formed by the Niagara in sliding from the Whirlpool." 

If one wishes to know the measure of the mind of 
N. P. Willis, he may gain it from Willis's description 
of the Falls of Niagara. It does not suit our purpose 
to quote it here. It is the same mixture of poetry and 
commonplace, of incident and contact with people, that 
made Mr. Willis the ideal magazine writer of that time. 

It is strange to note how different points seem to 
be the center of focussed thought to different minds. 
To Mrs. TroUope it was the centre of the Horse-shoe, 
which seemed " the most utterly inconceivable." 
'' The famous torrent converges there, as the heavy 
mass pours in, twisted, rolled and curled together ; it 
gives the idea of irresistible power such as no other 
object ever conveyed to me. The mighty caldron into 
which the deluge pours, the hundred silvery torrents 
congregated around its verge, the smooth and solemn 
movement with which it rolls its massive volume over 
the rock, the liquid emerald of its long unbroken 
waters, the fantastic wreaths which spring to meet it, 



1^2 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

-1 

and then the shadowy mist that veils the horrors of 
the crash below, constitute a scene almost too enor- 
mous in its features for man to look upon." i 

To Charles Dudley Warner it is at a different point 
the mind pauses and feels its most impressive moment. 
'* Nowhere is the river so terrible as where it rushes, 
as if maddened by its narrow bondage through the 
caiion ; flowing down the precipice and forced into 
this contracting space, it fumes and tosses and raves 
with a vindictive fury, driving on in a passion that has 
almost a human quality in it ; and restrained by the 
walls of stone from being destructive, it seems to rave 
at its own impotence, and when it reaches the Whirl- 
pool it is like a hungry animal, returning and Hcking 
the shore for the prey it has missed." 

Professor Richard Proctor is impressed by the ter- 
rible force of the Niagara at the same spot. Speaking 
of the fatal attempt of Captain Webb to swim the Whirl- 
pool Rapids he says : " He maybe did not know what 
a rough estimate of the enierges at work in Niagara 
should have shown, that amid that mass of water which 
descends from the basin below the Falls to the engulf- 
ing vortex of the Whirlpool, the body of the biggest 
and strongest living creature must be as powerless as 
a drop of water in mid- Atlantic." 

When Anthony TroUope assures us in his dis- 
cussions upon novel-writmg that all that a novelist 
needs is a table and chair with a bit of shoemaker's wax 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS, 1 33 

Upon the seat of it, we suspect that he is only excusing 
his own voluminous production. He does not lack 
poetic inspiration as the following quotations will 
show : '' But we will go on at once to the glory and 
thunder and the majesty, and the wrath of that upper 
hell of waters. We are still on Goat Island. Advanc- 
ing beyond the path leading down to the lower Fall, we 
come to that point of the Island at which the waters 
of the main river begin to descend. , Go down to the 
end of the wooden bridge, seat yourself on the rail, 
and then sit 'till all the outer world is lost to you. 
There is no grander spot about Niagara than this. 
The waters are absolutely around you. Here, seated 
on the rail of the bridge, you will not see the whole 
depth of the Fall. In looking at the grandest works of 
nature and of art too, I fancy it is never well to see all. 
There should be something left to the imagination, and 
much should be half concealed in mystery. The 
greatest charm of a mountain range is that wild feeling, 
there must be something strange, unknown, desolate 
in those far-off valleys beyond. And so here, at Nia- 
gara, that converging rush of waters may fall down, 
down at once into a hell of rivers, for what the eye can 
see. It is glorious to watch them in their first curve 
over the rocks. They come green as a bank of em- 
eralds ; but with a fitful flying color, as though con- 
scious that in one moment more they would be dashed 
into spray and rise into air pale as driven snow. The 



134 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

vapor rises high into the air and is gathered there, 
visible always as a permanent white cloud over the 
cataract ; but the bulk of the spray which fills the 
lower hollow of that horseshoe is like a tumult of snow. 

''This you will not fully see from your seat on the 
rail. The head of it rises ever and anon out of that 
caldron below, but the caldron itself will be invisible. 
It is ever so far down, far as your own imagination can 
sink it. But your eyes will rest full upon the curve of 
the waters. The shape you will be looking at is that 
of a horseshoe, but of a horseshoe miraculously deep 
from toe to heel ; and this depth becomes greater as 
you sit there. That which at first was only great and 
beautiful, becomes gigantic and sublime till the mind is 
at a loss to find an epithet for its own use. To realize 
Niagara you must sit there 'till you see nothing else 
than that which you have come to see. You will 
hear nothing else and think of nothing else. At length 
you will be at one with the tumbling river before you. 
You will find yourself among the waters as though you 
belonged to them. The cool Hquid green will run 
through your veins, and the voice of the cataract will 
be the expression of your heart. You will fall, as the 
bright waters fall, rushing down into your new world 
with no hesitation and with no dismay ; and you will 
rise again as the spray rises, bright, beautiful and pure. 

" One of the great charms of Niagara consists in this 
— that over and above that one great object of wonder 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 1 35 

and beauty; there is so much Httle loveliness ; loveliness 
especially of water, I mean. There are little rivulets 
running here and there over little falls, with pendent 
boughs above them, and stones shining under their 
shallow depths. As the visitor stands and looks 
through the trees, the Rapids glitter before him, and 
then hide themselves behind islands. They glitter and 
sparkle in far distances under the bright foliage till the 
remembrance is lost and one knows not which way 
they run. 

** Of all the sights in this earth of ours which tour- 
ists travel to see — at least of all those which I have 
seen — I am inclined to give the palm to Niagara. I 
know no other one thing so beautiful, so glorious, so 
powerful." 

When we know that Bayard Taylor visited the 
Falls of Niagara we instantly desire to know what im- 
pression was made upon a mind which had contem- 
plated such a wide range and variety as this great trav- 
eler had seen and had elsewhere described. He thus 
brings his poetic imagination to the contemplation : 
*' The picturesque shores of the river, the splendid green 
of the water, and the lofty line of the upper plateau in 
front, crowned with Brock's monument, and divided 
by the dark yawning gorge of Niagara, form a fitting 
vestibule to the grand adytum beyond. The chasm 
grows wider, deeper and more precipitous with evejy 
mile, until having seen the Suspension Bridge appar- 



136 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

ently floating in mid-air on your right, you look 
ahead, and two miles off you catch a glimpse of the 
emerald crest of Niagara, standing fast and fixed above 
its shifting chaos of snowy spray. 

" I have seen the Falls in all weathers and at all sea- 
sons, but to my mind the winter view is most beautiful. 
I saw them first in the hard winter of 1854, when a 
hundred cataracts of ice hung from the cliffs on either 
side, when the masses of ice brought down from Lake 
Erie were wedged together at the foot, uniting the 
shores with a rugged bridge, and when every twig and 
every tree and bush in Goat Island was overlaid an 
inch deep with a coating of solid crystal. The air was 
still and the sun shone in a cloudless sky. The green 
of the Fall set in a landscape of sparkling silver, was 
infinitely more brilliant than in the summer, when it is 
balanced by the trees, and the rainbows were almost too 
glorious for the eye to bear. I was not impressed by 
the sublimity of the scene nor even by its terror, but 
solely by the fascination of its wonderful beauty, a 
fascination which constantly tempted me to plunge 
into that sea of fused emerald and lose myself in the 
dance of the rainbows. With each succeeding visit 
Niagara has grown in height, in power, in majesty, in 
solemnity ; but I have seen its climax of beauty." 

Reference has been made in this writing to the re- 
markable fact that the greater American poets have 
not attempted to describe Niagara. The fact is easily 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 1 37 

discernible in their writings ; but the cause of this ap- 
parent neglect of a theme, which has tempted so many 
smaller singers must be sought in the laws of the 
human mind as affected by the contact of that which 
transcends all rhythmic expression. It would seem 
that the greater the gift of expression for the less over- 
powering appeal of Nature to the soul, the more im- 
potent in this presence the poets have felt. There are 
not wanting indeed poems about Niagara, one which 
flows like the river itself, undamed for forty thousand 
lines ; and in some of these individual lines there are 
perhaps several lines together which seem to catch 
the swing of the great Cataract ; though at best they 
are a shrill pipeing to its mighty diapason ; they are 
like the song of the wren on its bank. Even Mrs. 
Sigourney's lines are felt by her to be inadequate : 

Ah, who can dare 
To hft the insect-trump of earthly hope, 
Or love, or sorrow, 'mid the peal sublime 
Of thy tremendous hymn ? Even Ocean shrinks 
Back from thy brotherhood and all his waves 
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem 
To sleep like a spent laborer and recall 
His wearied billows from their vexing play. 
And lull them to a cradle calm ; but thou 
With everlasting, undecaying tide. 
Dost rest not, night or day." 
* * * 

'' Thou dost make the soul 
A wondering witness of thy majesty. 



138 FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 

And as it presses with delirious joy 
To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step, 
And tame its rapture with a humbling view 
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand 
In the dread presence of the Invisible, 
As if to answer to its God through thee." 

These are perhaps the best of the lines written by 
Mrs. Sigourney ; but their inadequacy is felt by any 
one who compares them with a moment's recollection 
of his own feelings in the presence they attempt to de- 
scribe. 

The lines of Lord Morpeth are well known, they 
seem most memorable for the sincere expression of 
that good will which he hoped might ever subsist be- 
tween the nations, his own and America : 

'* Oh ! may thy waves which madden in thy deep 
There spend their rage nor climb the encircling 

steep ; 
And till the conflict of thy surges cease 
The nations on thy banks repose in peace." 

There seems to be a wide-spread conviction that 
the oft-quoted lines of John G. C. Brainard are " the 
noblest lines inspired by the great Cataract." They 
are notable as rising in the mind of a New England 
editor who had never seen the Falls, and are said to 
have been the work of a few moments — an improvisa- 
tion : 



FAMOUS VISITORS AT THE FALLS. 1 39 

'* The thoughts are strange that crowd into my 

brain 
While I look upward to thee. It would seem 
As if God poured thee from * His hollow hand ' 
And hung His bow upon thine awful front, 
And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to 

him 
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Savior's sake 
* The sound of many waters,' and had bade 
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back. 
And notch His cent'ries in the eternal rock. 

*' Deep calleth unto Deep, And what are we 
That hear the question of that voice sublime ? 
Oh ! What are all the notes that ever rungr 
From war's vain trumpet by thy thundering side ! 
Yea, what is all the riot man can make 
In his short life to thy unceasing roar ! 
And yet bold babbler, what art thou to Him 
Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far 
Above its loftiest mountains ? — a light wave 
That breaks and whispers of its Maker's might." 

There are many other expressions of those who 
from all parts of the world have matched the feebleness 
of speech against the stress of feeling ; but we forbear 
to quote further. The extracts given above will prove 
sufficient for their purpose if they constitute a pleasure 
to the receptive mind, susceptible to the influences of 
the scene they visit, and if they prove a gentle warn- 
ing to the too eager expression of words which so 
often hide rather than reveal thought. 



\ 



r\ : MIST^OP-Y : OT= 




AMOUS all over the world as Niagara is 
today, in its scenic, botanic, geologic and 
hydraulic aspects, it is equally famous, 
equally interesting, and equally instructive in its var- 
ious and numerous historic features. And in using 
the words of our title we use them in their broadest 
and noblest sense, employing the word " historic " to 
cover all those multitudinous phases of this region's 
existence and condition at which a true student of 
history instinctively looks; we use the word Niagara, 
not in that circumscribed meaning which takes in only 
the Falls and their immediate surroundings, but make 
it cover both banks of this famous river from its 
source to its mouth. To treat of such a broad sub- 
ject within the narrow limits of a few pages will permit 
of only the briefest reference to any point. 

EARLY MENTIONS OF NIAGARA. 

Just when white men first saw the Falls we cannot 
accurately say. This great Cataract was known in a 
general w^ay to the Indians of North America, who 
dwelt far from it and w^ho had never seen it, prob- 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. I4I 

ably before Columbus sailed on his first voyage of dis- 
covery. At any rate, within fifty years after Columbus 
landed at San Salvador (to be exact, in 1535), its exis- 
tence was well known to the Indians on the Gulf of 
the St. Lawrence, and, through them, to at least one 
boat-load^ of adventurous Europeans. In that year 
Jacques Cartier made his second voyage to this Con- 
tinent, and the Indians told him in reply to his inquiries 
regarding the source of the St. Lawrence, that *' after 
ascending many leagues among rapids and waterfalls 
he would reach a lake (Ontario), 140 or 150 leagues 
broad, at the western end of which the waters were 
wholesome and the winters mild; that a river emptied 
into it from the south which had its source in the 
country of the Iroquois ; that beyond the lake he 
would find a cataract and a portage ; then another lake 
(Erie) about equal to the former, which they had 
never explored." This is related by Marc Lescarbot, 
who in 1609 published his History of New France, 
in which he describes Carrier's second voyage. During 
the hundred years succeeding that voyage, the Falls 
may have been visited at any time, by any of the 
adventurous explorers, traders and seamen sent out by 
France to resume explorations in the New World, 
although they have left us no record of any such visi- 
tations. Samuel De Champlain in his " Des Sau- 
vages," published in 1603 and describing his first voy- 
age to the St. Lawrence in that year, refers to the 



142 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

Falls in unmistakable language though not by name, 
and it is not probable that he ever saw them. In his 
1613 volume, describing his voyages up to that date, 
he locates them very accurately on his map as a ''water- 
fall," but not by name; and in his 1632 edition, he 
both locates them correctly, though not by their name, 
on his map and further refers to them in his descrip- 
tion of the map itself. In 1641, the Jesuit Father 
L'AUement in his letters to his superior, speaking of 
the Indian tribes, refers to the '' Neuter nation (Ongu- 
aarha), having the same name as the river ;" and in 
1648 the Jesuit Father Ragueneau in a similar letter 
says, " North of the Eries is a great lake fully 200 
leagues in circumference called Erie, formed by the 
discharge of the Mer Douce {\j^^ Huron), which falls 
into a third lake called Ontario, though we call it Lake 
St. Louis, over a cataract of fearful height." In 1656 
Sanson located the Falls accurately on his map and 
called them "Ongiara," and in 1660 De Creuxius in his 
Historiae Canadensis noted them as " Ongiara Catar- 
ractes." In 1678, Father Louis Hennepin, who accom- 
panied La Salle, tells us that **he personally" visited the 
Falls, and in his first book, Louisiana, published in 
1683, describing La Salle's explorations and adven- 
tures in this section of the country, applies the name 
Niagara both to the river and to the Falls, and gives 
the earliest, though a very brief description of the 
Falls themselves. In 1688, Coronellis's map of this 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. I43 

region locates the Falls and first uses the name " Ni- 
agara " in cartography, a name used from that date 
without change. In 1691, Father Le Clercq in his 
" Establishment of the Faith " (from which work 
Father Hennepin is accused of plagiarizing certain parts 
of his famous ''New Discovery"), also speaks of " Nia- 
gara Falls," but it is in Father Hennepin's *' New Dis- 
covery " just referred to, published in 1697, that we 
find the first real description of them preserved to us 
in type, and in that volume is also given the first illus- 
tration of the Falls, which is reproduced in this work. 
A part of Hennepin's description is also quoted in 
another article in this book. 

During the next fifty years Hennepin's works 
appeared in some forty-five editions and reproductions, 
and were translated into all the languages of Europe ; 
and by these means and from descriptions of other 
travelers (notably that of Campanius Holm, in his New 
Sweden, published in 1702, and Baron La Hontan's 
voyages published in 1703), Niagara became generally 
known to Europeans. It was reserved for Charlevoix 
in 1 72 1 accurately to reckon the height of the Falls and 
to correct other erroneous reports and descriptions of 
them published theretofore. We have thus briefly 
traced the history of the earliest knowledge and of 
the earliest literature of Niagara down to a compara- 
tively recent date. From that time the bibliography 
of Niagara, including its cartography and illustrations 



144 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

of every kind, is so voluminous as to form in itself a 
distinct branch of our title on which for lack of space 
we cannot even touch. 

THE NAME NIAGARA. 

The Indian custom of giving their tribal name to, 
or taking it from, the chief natural feature of the 
country they inhabited (as proved by the nomenclature 
of the central and eastern states, as well as in the ex- 
tensive literature on Indian subjects) tells us that a 
nation of this name inhabited the territory along the 
Niagara River on both sides ; but as there are forty 
different known ways of spelling the name, its ortho- 
graphy differs materially with various early authors.* 
This much, however, we know, — that when Hennepin 
first saw the Falls, Niagara was the local Indian 
spelling of the name; "Niagara," the world ac- 
cepted it; and '* Niagara" it has been ever since. 
According to the most general acceptance the name is 
derived from what is commonly known as the Iroquois 
language, and signifies ** the thunder of the waters," 
though this appropriate and poetic significance has 
been questioned, and it is claimed by some that it sig- 
nifies ''■ neck," symbolizing the fact of the Niagara 
River being the connecting link between the two great 
lakes. 



*A list of these are given m the Index volume of the Documentary History 
of the State of New York. The most commonly met with of these variations 
are Onguaarha, Ongiara, Onyakara, lagara, Nicariaga, Ungiara, and Jagara, 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. I45 

The Neuter or Niagara nation of Indians (subse- 
quently merged into the Iroquois) by whom the name 
was first adopted, would seem to have pronounced it 
Nyih-ga-r^h, their language^ having no labial sounds^ 
and all their words being spoken without closing the 
lips. The pronunciation Nee-ah-gara, sometimes 
heard nowadays, was probably also in common use 
later on ; while in more modern Indian dialect, the 
sounding of every vowel being still continued, Ni-ah- 
gdh-rsh, (accent on the third syllable), was the ac- 
cepted, as it is the correct, pronunciation — the present 
pronunciation, without any pronounced accent on any 
syllable, being an adaptation of more recent years. 

MODERN HISTORY. 

The commencement of what may be termed the 
modern history of this region, dates back to that day 
in December, 1678, when, starting from the rtjouth of 
the Niagara River 

''A chieftain of the Iroquois, clad in a bison skin, 
Had let two travelers through the woods — 
La Salle and Hennepin." 

to view the great cataract of which they had heard so 
much from their Indian allies 'on the St. Lawrence. 
As these three men stood there, they typified the na- 
tions — the French and thelndian — that for almost a hun- 
dred years were to control the destinies of this region ; 
and in their personalities, " the chief, the soldier of the 



146 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

sword and the soldier of the cross," they exempHfied 
the professions by means of which its conquest and 
civilization were to be effected. 

In the two hundred years that have elapsed since 
that day, the Indian and the Frenchman have disap- 
peared from this region; another and a stronger race 
has acquired possession of this territory, to be in turn 
dispossessed of half of it by her own descendants. 
And during those two hundred years, on the pages of 
their history and in the literature of France, England, 
Canada and the United States, the name Niagara is 
indelibly stamped as a prominent and integral part. 

OWNERSHIP. 

So far as the contention for, and the possession of, 
this famous region by the nations of the earth are con- 
cerned, we may divide its history into these main 
periods. 

French claims on a broad basis by reason of 
early explorations and discoveries in the east, up to 
her real occupation by La Salle in 1678. 

French occupation and sovereignty from that date, 
gradually, but regularly, and at last successfully dis- 
puted by the English in 1759. 

English occupation and control from then till 
1776. 

English occupation till 1783, and from then of all 
land lying west of the Niagara River. 

United States ownership and control of that part 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. 14;^ 

lying east of the Niagara River from that date, although 
so far as Fort Niagara is concerned, England did not 
relinquish it till 1796. 

FRENCH OCCUPATION. 

The French, having early claimed all the North- 
eastern part of this continent from Labrador south- 
wards as above noted, began at an early date to push 
their explorations and conquests westwards at first 
mainly along the line of the St. Lawrence River. 
Champlain, between 1603 and 1630, had done much to 
make France a paramount force in this section and to 
attach many of the Indians to her allegiance by siding 
with them in their tribal wars against their neighbors, — 
an alliance which in after years arrayed many Indian 
tribes against her and hastened her defeat. 

On Dec. 6, 1878, La Salle, who, through love of his 
country and expectations of personal wealth, had labored 
long to extend the sovereignty of France, in a brig of 
ten tons and with a crew of sixteen persons entered the 
mouth of the Niagara River. He was on his westward 
journey, his objects being to make good by conquest 
the powers conferred upon him by the French king, to 
obtain for himself a monopoly of the fur trade, and to 
reach and control the mines of St. Barbe, in Louisiana; 
and as he went he intended to establish a chain of for- 
tifications which both in war and the fur trade should 
be points of vantage for future generations. 

True soldier that he was, he at once saw immense 



.148 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

strategic advantage of the point where Fort Niagara 
now stands, and to this day the correctness of his judg- 
ment has not been questioned. Here he built a trad- 
ing post, and pursuing his way up the Niagara River to 
where Lewiston now stands, he built a fort of palisades ; 
and carrying the anchors, cordage, etc., which he had 
brought for that purpose, up the so-called " Three 
Mountains " at Lewiston, he found a spot at the mouth of 
Cayuga Creek, about five miles above the Falls (where 
is to-day a hamlet bearing his name) where he built and 
launched the Griffon the first vessel that ever sailed the 
upper lakes. For almost a hundred years after this the 
history of the Niagara Frontier belongs to the French, 
though their sovereignty was attacked and at last 
overthrown by the English. 

In 1687, Marquis De Nonville, returning from his 
expedition against the hostile Senecas, fortified La 
Salle's trading post at Fort Niagara. The following 
year it was abandoned and destroyed, but it was too 
valuable a point of vantage to be lost, and in 1725 it 
was rebuilt in stone by consent of the Iroquois. 

The site of the present village of Lewiston, the head 
of navigation on the lower Niagara, was the commence- 
ment of a portage by which goods, ammunition, etc. 
were conveyed to a point about a mile and a half above 
the Falls, over a line which is still called the Portage 
Road ; and for the purposes of this portage, from the 
edge of the river at the lower end of the rapids up the 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. 1 49 

" Three Mountains," was built a rude tramway on 
which, by means of ropes and windlasses, a car was 
raised and lowered. At what date this was first oper- 
ated, we cannot tell, but it is claimed to have been the 
first of its kind in use in this country. Though noted 
on many maps no trace even of its foundations now 
remains. The Indians, naturally averse to manual 
labor, operated the tramway, taking their pay in rum 
and tobacco, otherwise unobtainable by them. The 
upper end of this portage was originally only a landing 
place for boats, but was gradually fortified until in 1750 
it became a strong fort — called Fort Du Portage, or by 
some. Fort Little Niagara — to defend the French 
barracks and store houses which had been erected 
there. The Fort was burned in 1759 by Joncaire, who 
was in comrnand when the British commenced their 
memorable campaign of that year, and Joncaire retreated 
to a station on Chippewa Creek. In that campaign 
General Prideaux, commanding the British forces in this 
section, and carrying out that portion of the general 
plan assigned to him, massed his forces on the shore 
of Lake Ontario, east of Fort Niagara, and demanded 
its surrender ; this being refused, he laid siege to it. 
During the siege Prideaux was killed, and Sir William 
Johnson succeeded him and captured Fort Niagara, the 
last stronghold then held by the French in that long 
chain of forts connecting Canada with Louisiana. Dur- 
ing the siege the French had sent re-inforcements from 



150 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

Venango in Pennsylvania to the garrison of Niagara. 
They got as far as Navy Island (named Isle de Mar- 
ine by the French), on which they had landed when 
they learned of the surrender of the Fort. ^ On this 
island the French had recently built some small vessels, 
and to prevent these, as well as the two ships which 
brought down the re-inforcements from Venango, from 
falling into the hands of the victorious English, they took 
them over to Grand Island, at the northern end of which 
is a bay where they set them on fire, destroying them 
and sinking the useless hulls, from which circumstance 
the place is called Burnt Ship Bay to this day. 

The British successes of 1759 made them masters 
of all this frontier and by 1 76 1 , Captain Joseph Schlosser 
of the British Army built a fort a little to the east of 
Fort Du Portage and named it after himself. Just below 
the site of that fort still stands a solitary stone chimney, 
the only rehc left of all these fortifications. It was 
part of the old French barracks, alluded to above, at 
Fort Du Portage. 

devil's hole massacre. 

The Indian nature is heartless and unforgiving. 
When Champlain in his trip to the lake which bears 
his name asked the assistance of the Senecas, he took 
their part in their tribal war against the Iroquois. 
Thus was laid the commencement of that partisanship 
of the various Indian tribes, some to the French and 
some to the English, which lasted throughout the 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. I 55 

better part of the eighteenth century, and one of the 
results of which was that fatal tragedy on this frontier 
known as '* The Devil's Hole Massacre." 

After the British success of 1759 and their subse- 
quent control of this territory, the Senecas, actuated 
by their inherited hatred of the English and incited 
probably by the French, commenced a bloody supple- 
mental campaign in 1763. Knowing that the Enghsh 
were daily sending slightly guarded trains from Fort 
Niagara through Lewiston, where they had an auxiliary 
encampment, to Fort Schlosser, they planned an am- 
buscade and executed it with precision and fatal results. 
At the narrow pass at the Devil's Hole they ambushed 
the supply train, destroying it and killing all but three of 
the escort and drivers. They then ambushed the reliev- 
ing force, which on hearing the firing had hastened from 
Lewiston, killing all but eight. It was a masterly 
example of Indian warfare executed with Indian cun- 
ning and Indian bloodthirstiness. 

CESSIONS AND TREATIES. 

By the treaty of 1763 France ceded to England all 
this region and all her Canadian possessions for which 
her armies and her missionaries had spent, during one 
hundred years, so much energy, so vast an amount of 
money, and so many lives. 

In the spring of 1764 Sir WiUiam Johnson, sup- 
plementing the treaty of the preceding year, assembled 
all the Indians of this region, over 2,000 in number, 



156 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

including the hostile Senecas, at Fort Niagara, and 
acquired from them, for the English crown, the title to 
a large tract of land, including a strip eight miles in 
width, four miles wide on each side of the Niagara 
river for its entire length. At the same time the 
Senecas ceded to Sir William Johnson all the islands 
in the Niagara river. He in turn ceded them to the 
British Sovereign. So that at this time Niagara Falls, 
the grandest and most noted Cataract on the globe, was 
the Koh-i-noor of the English crown in the New World. 
Twelve years afterwards the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence was signed and the long revolutionary struggle 
for independence commenced. Had General Sullivan's 
campaign of 1779, as planned, been successful, he 
would have attacked Fort Niagara ; but disaster over- 
took him and the tide of revolution never reached the 
Niagara river in actual hostilities. In 1783 the treaty 
of Paris was signed, by which England admitted the 
independence of the United States and recognized the 
Great Lakes as our northern boundary, though it was 
not until 1796, after the ratification of Jay's treaty, 
that she abandoned some of the strongholds on our 
soil, including Fort Niagara. 

WAR OF 18 12. 
It is foreign to the purpose of this article to discuss 
the causes, some of which had a bearing on this re- 
gion, which led up to President Madison's proclama- 
tion of war between Great Britain and the United 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. I 57 

States, known as the War of i8i 2, of which this im- 
mediate region, popularly called the Niagara frontier, 
felt the full force. In the fall of that year, four months 
after the declaration of war. Gen. Van Rensselaer estab- 
lished his camp near Lewiston (so called in honor of 
Gov. Lewis of New York), and collected an army to in- 
vade Canada. After one unsuccessful attempt he 
reached the Canadian shore, and by the time Gen. Brock 
had arrived from the mouth of the river to oppose 
him, was in possession of Queenston Heights. In en- 
deavoring to recapture these and to retrieve the point of 
vantage that never should have been lost, Gen. Brock 
was killed. British reinforcements arriving from Ni- 
agara, the Americans were dislodged from the heights, 
defeated and many taken prisoners. Meanwhile, on 
the American side in full view of the battle, were some 
hundreds of American volunteers who basely refused 
to cross the river and aid their companions. At the 
foot of Queenston Heights an inscribed stone (set in 
place by the Prince of Wales in i860) marks the 
spot where Brock fell and was buried ; and on the 
heights above, a lofty and beautiful column (the second 
one erected at this point, the first one having been 
blown up by a miscreant in 1840), stands as a monu- 
ment of his country's gratitude. In the same year 
Gen. Alexander Smyth of Virginia issued his fa- 
mous bombastic circular inviting everybody to join 
him at Black Rock, near Buffalo, and invade Canada 



158 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

from that point. Some five thousand men responded to 
his invitation, but Smyth having made himself a 
laughing-stock among his own people, the invasion 
was abandoned and the army dispersed. 

In the following year, 18 13, the Americans captured 
Fort George on the Canadian shore near the mouth of 
the Niagara River and the village of Newark or Niagara. 
This is the oldest settlement in this section. It was 
for a time the residence of the Lieutenant Governor of 
Canada, and here in 1792 the first Parliament of Upper 
Canada held its session. Newark was burned by the 
Americans on their retreat, without reason, as the Brit- 
ish claimed, and they immediately retaliated; for ten 
days later they surprised and captured Fort Niagara and 
burned every American village on the Niagara River, 
including Youngstown , Lewiston , Manchester(no w Nia - 
gara Falls), Fort Schlosser, Black Rock, and Buffalo, 
spreadmg devastation along the American frontier. 
The year 18 14 witnessed two battles in the vicinity of 
the Falls themselves, both on the Canadian side. 
Chippewa, a victory for the Americans, and Bridgewater 
or Lundy's Lane, claimed as a victory by both parties. 
The latter was one of the most remarkable conflicts re- 
corded in history. Within sight of the Falls, m the glory 
of the light of a full moon, the opposing armies en- 
gaged in hand-to-hand conflict, from sun-down to mid- 
night, when both sides, exhausted by their efforts, with- 
drew from the field. The British before dawn, and 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. I 59 

unopposed, re-occupied the battle ground, and on this 
alone rests their claim to victory. Later on the Ameri- 
can army occupied Fort Erie, which they had shortly 
before wrested from the British and where they were 
besieged by them. From this Fort on the seventeenth 
of September, 1814, the Americans made that famous 
and successful sortie, which disbanded the British be- 
siegers, this being the only case in history according 
to Lord Napier, where a besieging army was entirely 
defeated and disbanded by such a movement. 

We necessarily omit all reference to many points 
along the river made famous by the exploits, the dar- 
ing and often by the loss of life of the combatants in 
this war — points locally important in themselves but 
which have not risen to the dignity of that much abused 
word ** history." 

The Treaty of Ghent restored peace to both coun- 
tries and to the inhabitants on their exhausted frontiers. 
Under this treaty, commissioners were appointed to 
locate the boundery line between Canada and the 
United States, already somewhat laxly provided for in 
the treaty of 1783. These commissioners agreed to 
run the boundery line along this frontier, through the 
middle of the Horse Shoe Falls arid through the deep- 
est channel of the River, both above and below them. 
Thus Navy Island fell to the share of the Canadians 
and Grand Island became American soil. 



l6o HISTORFC NIAGARA. 

LAND TITLES. 

Wc have already noted the cession of this region 
by the French to the English in 1763, and also the 
cession by the English of the eastern side of the 
river to the United States at the close of the revolu- 
tionary war, which joint occupation has never since 
been permanently disturbed. We also noted the ces- 
sion by the Senecas to the English of the land on 
each side of the river and of the islands to Sir William 
Johnson and by him to the English crown. 

A strip of land one rnile wide along the American 
shore from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie had been 
exempted, when New York ceded the ownership of 
what is now the western portion of this State, to 
Massachusetts, which ownership New York subse- 
quently re-acquired. Finally the Indians, who, m 
spite of their former cession to England, still claimed 
the ownership, ceded to New York, for ;^ 1,000 and an 
annuity of ;^ 1,500, their title to all the islands in the 
Niagara river. In order to get the title New York 
had previously acquired title from the Indians to the 
mile strip which had been alloted to America by tjie 
treaty of Ghent. The State of New York patented 
this mile strip to individuals commencing in the first 
decade of this century. 

FAMOUS INCIDENTS. 

Fort Niagara became a spot ot national celebrity 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. l6l 

in 1 824. William Morgan, a resident of Batavia in this 
state, and a member of the Masonic Fraternity, threat- 
ened to disclose the secrets of that body in print. He 
was quietly seized and taken away from his home. 
He was traced in the hands of his abductors to Fort 
Niagara, where he is said to have been incarcerated in 
one of the cellars of the fort, and to this day ''Morgan's 
dungeon " is one of the sights shown to visitors. He 
was never heard of after he entered the fort, and popu- 
lar fancy says that he was taken from this dungeon 
by night and drowned in Lake Ontario. Several per- 
sons were, subsequently tried for his murder, but no 
proof of their complicity in the matter, nor even of 
Morgan's death was produced. The principal episode 
in ■ the famous anti-Masonic agitation of that period 
thus became a part of Niagara's local history. 

In the same year Grand Island, which contains 
about eighteen thousand acres, was selected by Major 
M. M. Noah as the future home of the Jews of the 
New World. He proposed to buy the island, make 
of it a second Jerusalem, and within the sound of 
Niagara to build up an ideal community of wealth and 
industry. In 1825, acting as the Great High Priest 
of the Project, clad in sacerdotal robes, attended in 
procession by the civic and military authorities, local 
societies and a great concourse of people, with appro- 
priate ceremonies, he laid the corner stone of his future 
City of Ararat on the altar of a Christian Church in 



1 62 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

Buffalo. This corner stone was subsequently built into 
a monument at Whitehaven on Grand Island, opposite 
the village of Tonawanda. It is now in the possession 
of the Buffalo Historical Society. Major Noah's plan 
fell through, as the Patriarch of Jerusalem refused his 
sanction to the project. 

THE PATRIOT WAR. 

In 1837 occurred what is known as the Canadian 
Patriot War. While the agitation of the Patriots cen- 
tered in Toronto, it kept the entire Niagara fiontier on 
the Canadian side in a ferment for several months, and 
Navy Island became one of their rendezvous, a portion 
of the British troops being stationed at Chippewa. 
Without reference to the intrigues carried on along the 
frontier by the Canadian agitators with their American 
sympathizers, we deal only with the one important 
event known as the Caroline episode. It was openly 
charged that the Patriots were receiving substantial aid 
from the American side, not only from private indi- 
viduals, but also by reason of the non-intervention of 
national and state authorities, when they knew that 
arms were being shipped and material assistance ren- 
dered from American soil. So bitter was the feeling 
on the part of the Britishers, that when the opportun- 
ity offered, it is not surprising that they made the 
most of it. A small steamer, the Caroline, had been 
chartered by Buffalo parties to run between that city. 
Navy Island where the insurgents were encamped, and 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. 163 

Schlosser Landing on the American shore. Accord- 
ing to their statement it was a private enterprise, started 
to make money by carrying excursionists to the insur- 
gents' camp ; but according to the Canadian view, her 
real business was to convey arms and provisions to 
the insurgents. On the night of December 29 the 
Caroline lay at Schlosser 's dock. The excitement had 
drawn large numbers of people here ; all the hotels 
were filled, and some people had sought a night's lodg- 
ing on the steamer itself. At midnight six boat loads 
of British soldiers, sent from Chippewa by Sir Allan 
McNab, silently approached the Caroline, boarded and 
captured her, turned off all on board, cut her moorings, 
set her on fire and towed her into the river. In the 
melee and exchange of shots, one man, Amos Durfee, 
was killed. The boat was burned to the waters edge 
and sank not far from where she had been cut adrift. 
The affair caused intense excitement and was the 
source of long diplomatic correspondence, the British 
government assuming full responsibility for the claimed 
breaches of international law. One-man, Alexander 
McLeod, was arrested and tried in this State for man- 
slaughter and finally acquitted. 

THE ERIE CANAL. 

On October 26, 1825, a cannon boomed forth its 
greeting at Buffalo ; a few seconds afterward another 
cannon a short distance down the River caught up the 
sound, and so on, cannon after cannon, cannon after 



164 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

cannon, down the Niagara River to Tonawanda, thence 
easterly to Albany, thence down the bank of the Hud- 
son to New York City, transmitting the message that 
at the source of the historic Niagara River the waters 
of Lake Erie had been let into that just completed 
water-way — the Erie Canal. 

THE FENIAN WAR. 

From the time of the Patriot War, with the excep- 
tion of the Fenian Outbreak in 1866, the history of 
this region has nothing to do with international war. 
The Fenian Outbreak, similar in its inception so far as 
its hostility to the existing government of Canada and 
a desire to aid the Irish cause of home-rule by inciting 
hostilities among England's colonies, was quickly sup- 
pressed. Of actual hostilities during that agitation 
there was but one occurrence, known as the battle of 
Ridgeway on the Canadian side in the vicinity of Buf- 
falo, where the Fenians were defeated. 

COMMERCIAL HISTORY. 

In its commercially historic aspects, there stands 
out one important project in connection with Niagara 
Falls which has been broached by its advocates in pub- 
lic and in private, and especially in the halls of 
Congress for the past three quarters of a century. Al- 
though by international treaty, no war vessels are per- 
mitted on the upper lakes, in the line of Washington's 
famous aphorism, that " the best way to maintain 
peace is to be prepared for war," the advocates of a 



HISTORIC NIAGARA. 165 

ship canal of a capacity large enough to float our lar- 
gest vessels, connecting the Niagara River some two 
or three miles above the Falls with its quiet waters at 
Lewiston or below, have continued their agitations; and 
preliminary appropriations, and elaborate surveys — 
showing three or four routes — have been made by Con- 
gress at three different times. The project so far has 
made but little headway towards a successful consider- 
ation. Of its earliest commercial history, during the 
first years of the century, when private individuals 
bought the land from the State on account of its ad- 
jacent water power, and established here a village which 
they named Manchester, — of the first utilization of a por- 
tion of its enormous power in recent years and of the pres- 
ent stupendous power development now nearing comple- 
tion, we cannot treat for lack of space. The enormous 
development of power and its electrical transmission 
with all that this will add to Niagara's future history 
are treated of elsewhere in this volume. 

STATE RESERVATION AT NIAGARA. 

In 1885, after some years of pubHc agitation, the 
State of New York acquired Goat Island and the terri- 
tory on the river bank adjacent to the Falls and for 
a half-mile above them, dedicating it by its ownership 
as free forever to the world. The Province of Ontario 
took a similar course on the Canadian side, so that 
from now on the Falls themselves and the adjacent 
lands, under the ownership of two friendly nations, are 



1 66 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

forever preserved from any real defacement of their 
scenery by commercial enterprises. The honor of first 
suggesting this preservation of the scenery has been 
claimed by many persons. But the first real sugges- 
tion, though made without details, came from two 
Scotchmen, Andrew Reed and James Matheson, 
who in 1835, in a volume describing their visit 
to the Congregational churches of this country, first 
broached the idea that Niagara should ** be deemed 
the property of civilized mankind." 

INDIAN LORE. 

This region is rich in Indian lore and tradition 
which is Indian history) never yet thoroughly col- 
lected. Commencing far back when the Neuter nation, 
or more probably an earlier race*, dwelt hereabouts, 
they worshipped the Great Spirit of the Falls, their 
worship culminating annually in the sacrifice of the 
fairest maiden of the tribe to the Great Spirit of 
Niagara, sending her over the Falls in a white canoe 
laden with fruits and flowers; next, their inter-tribal 
wars ; later on the temporarily successful but ultimately 
inevitable futile attempt of the Neuter nation to main- 
tain a neutral existence ; their use of Goat Island as the 
burying ground of their chiefs and warriors, and their 
adoration of the island because of such use ; their sub- 
sequent joining of the Iroquois to avoid total destruc- 

*The Tuscaroras who live on the reservation near Lewiston are the de 
scendants of the North Carolina tribe, who came to New York in 1712 and 
]oined the confederacy of the Iroquoia. 



HISTORIC NIAGARA, 1 6/ 

tion by them ; later on their annihilation as a distinct 
tribe, the remnant that was left seeking refuge among 
the Hurons ; their return after a lapse of nearly three- 
quarters of a century and their ultimate extinction, 
form an unwritten page of historic Niagara which will 
probably never be completed with the accuracy that 
its importance demands. 

LOCAL HISTORY. 

To later local history in different aspects, we can 
only refer ; to the engineering triumphs in the various 
bridges that span this River and the attendant benefits 
to this region ; to the famous achievements of Blondin 
and others who have crossed the gorge on a rope ; to 
the trip made by the Maid of the Mist in 1861, under 
the guidance of Joel R. Robinson from Niagara to 
Lewiston — the only boat that has ever successfully 
done so — proving, so fa;r as that portion of the river is 
concerned, what the courts have held, that the Niagara 
River throughout its entire length is a navigable stream ; 
to men, who Kke Francis Abbot have associated their 
names with the Falls in one way, or like Capt. Webb, 
with the Rapids in another way; to the fall of Table 
Rock in 1850, showing to this generation the undermin- 
ing process by which Niagara has cut the gorge ; or to 
the numberless accidents which have annually occurred, 
some by accident, some intentionally. 

Each of these in one way or another have tended 
to make history, and to point out lines of thought 



1 68 HISTORIC NIAGARA. 

whose deductions must benefit future generations, and to 
all these which are necessarily blended with Niagara's 
history, we can but refer in this way. 

Such, in outline, and with almost brutal brevity, is 
the foundation for that great work to which some mas- 
ter mind will some day devote its energies, and pro- 
duce, to its own fame and to the benefit of intetnational 
literature, a work whose pages shall contain events as 
yet imperfectly recorded and whose subject may be 
the words of our title, Historic Nias^ara. 




Fac-Simile of a view of Niagara Falls by 

Father Hennepin. 

{From the Original Utrecht Edition, i6gf). 




THE traveler, who seeks for exhibitions of the 
grander forces of nature, will find his wishes 
abundantly gratified at Niagara. The fall of the waters 
of one of the greatest rivers of the world over a preci- 
pice of more than one hundred and fifty feet in height, 
and the constantly growing record of their power to 
channel through the enduring rock, will prove to 
him an absorbing, yet perplexing, subject for study. 
But the tourist, who takes enjoyment in the shadows 
of a forest, almost unchanged from its natural condition, 
in the stateliness and symmetry of individual trees, 
planted by the hand of Nature herself, in the beauty 
and fragrance of many species of flowers, growing 
without cultivation and in countless numbers, in the 
ever-varying forms and hues of foliage, and in the 
continually shifting panorama of the animated creation 
so near the scenes of human activity and occupation 
and yet so fi-ee from their usual effects, will find 
upon the borders of the river, within its chasm and on 
the islands, which hang upon the brink of the great 
cataract, an abundant gratification of his taste and an 
exhaustless field for study. 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. I7I 

To such a person — to all, in fact, who realize how 
ennobling it is to the heart of man to be brought at 
times face to face with Nature, whether in her beauty 
or her sublimity — it must always be the source of pro- 
found satisfaction to know that by the wise and liberal 
policy of the State of New York and the Dominion of 
Canada, so large an area of country, contiguous to the 
river and the Falls, has been made a public property, 
and, placed forever beyond the reach of vandal hands, 
is now dedicated, for all time, to the highest and most 
exalted purposes. 

Although in this volume a chapter has been de- 
voted to the geology of Niagara, by one abundantly 
qualified for the task, nevertheless, for a proper pre- 
sentation of the Natural History of the Falls and of the 
region of which it is the centre, a passing glance should 
here be bestowed upon the geological record of Goat 
Island and the river, within whose embrace it lies, to 
bring out more clearly the relation to it of its Fauna 
and Flora. For this purpose it is not necessary to ex- 
plore the measureless periods of time in which the 
imagination of the geologist is accustomed to range at 
will. It is demonstrable that in a scientific sense the 
Island itself is of a trifling antiquity. In fact it would 
be difficult to point out in the western world any con- 
siderable tract of land more recent in its origin. 

There is every evidence to believe that the Niagara 
River has excavated its enormous chasm since the close 



172 THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

of the period known to geologists as the Glacial Age. 
Whether before the coming on of the Glacial Age the 
upper lakes were connected or not with Lake Ontario 
(a proposition which seems to be well' received in the 
geological world), it seems very certain that there- 
after Lake Erie, Lake Huron and Lake Superior 
sent their waters to the sea through an outlet which 
Lake Michigan then had into the Mississippi. A 
barrier not greater than fifty feet in height would 
suffice, even to-day, to reverse the current of Lake 
Erie and Lake Huron and compel the discharge of 
their contents into the Mississippi, either by re-opening 
the old, abandoned channel at the head of Lake Michi- 
gan or by forming a new one. The barrier, which 
was broken down at the time, when in fact the physi- 
cal history of the Niagara River began, may be pointed 
out with reasonable certainty to-day. A ridge near 
the foot of Lake Erie, which at one time extended in 
an eastward and westward course, crossing the present 
channel of the Niagara River, was that barrier. On 
either side of the river it attains a height of sixty or 
seventy feet above the present level of Lake Erie. It 
is almost unnecessary to say that this barrier was of 
glacial origin — an immense moraine. From its base, 
on the northerly side, to the verge of the cliff at 
Lewiston and Queenston, where the cataract began 
its work of erosion, the surface of the underlying rock 
rises steadily. At the summit of the cliff at Lewiston 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 1/3 

and Queenston, it has an elevation of thirty-two feet 
above the present level of Lake Erie. 

It is fair to assume that although the lake ( or 
river), after its irruption through this barrier, spread 
widely, yet that the beginning of the excavation of the 
chasm at Lewiston was not long delayed. 

Along the entire length of the river from Lake Erie 
to Lewiston and Queenston, the terraces, left by the 
river, as from time to time it deepened and narrowed 
its channel, may be easily recognized. Often they 
show evidence that they were formed at the bottom of 
the river before the chasm had been excavated, being 
very largely composed of water-worn stones and 
materials, brought and deposited by the river itself 
from more southerly localities. 

Goat Island is of this origin. It is in fact a portion 
of such a terrace. In a single place upon the Island 
there is to be seen a small quantity of clay, possibly 
deposited by the glacier where it is found, but more 
likely to have been brought by the current of the river 
along with the other materials which make up the 
soil. Mixed with the soil of Goat Island and with 
that of the river terraces in other places, there may be 
seen an abundance of the half-decomposed remains of 
fluviatile and lacustrine MoUusca — shell-fish, univalve 
and bivalve, identical in species with those still living 
in the lake and river. 

The period which has been employed by the river 



174 THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS 

in the excavation of the chasm, below the Falls, has, 
for more than half a century, been a most interesting 
study of the geologist. As early as 1841, Sir Charles 
Lyell, pre-eminent in his day as a geologist, from such 
data as he was then able to command, computed the 
time necessary for the work at no less than 3 5 ,000 years. 
Later geologists have sought, but unsucessfuUy, to 
reduce the period. When, however, the Island 
appeared above the river, substantially as it now is, 
presents a more difficult problem. But that the 
deposit of the materials, of which its soil is composed, 
began as soon as the irruption of the river through the 
moraine, at the foot of Lake Erie, was accomplished, 
can scarcely be doubted. That 35,000 years have 
passed, since the shells, found on the Island and in the 
terraces on either side of the river, were deposited, 
and that no specific difference is to be discovered, 
between them and their existing representatives and 
progeny, are facts full of interest to the evolutionist. 

A calcareous soil, enriched with an abundance of 
organic matter, like that of Goat Island, would 
necessarily be one of great fertility. For the growth 
and sustentation of a forest, and of such plants as pre- 
fer the woods to the openings, it would far excel the 
deep and exhaustless alluvions of the Prairie States. 

For the preservation of so large a part of the native 
vegetation of the Island, we must be thankful to the 
policy of its former owners, who, through so many 




^.^^ -^^^S ,„^^ ^ 




The 



Horse Shoe Falls from Cariada-Looking towards the Three Sisters. 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 175 

years, kept it mainly in the condition in which Nature 
left it. To the naturalist, the hand of cultivation is 
often the hand of devastation. It has happily been 
spared, to a large extent, from the ravage of the axe 
and plough, and from the still more complete spoliation 
which comes from the pasturage of horses and cattle. 
It would be very difficult to find within another ter- 
ritory, so restricted in its limits, so great a diversity 
of trees and shrubs — still more difficult to find, in so 
small an area, such examples of arboreal symmetry 
and perfection, as the Island has to exhibit. 

From the geological history of the Island, as has 
thus been told, it would be inferred that it had re- 
ceived its Flora from the mainland. This, no doubt, 
is true. In fact the botanist is unable to point out a 
single instance of tree, or shrub, or herb, now growing 
upon the Island, not also to be found upon the main- 
land. But, as has been remarked, the distinguishing 
characteristic of its Flora is not the possession of any 
plant, elsewhere unknown, but the abundance of indi- 
viduals and species, which the Island displays. 

There are to be found in Western New York about 
one hundred and seventy species of trees and shrubs. 
Goat Island and the immediate vicinity of the river 
near the Fails can show of these no less than one 
hundred and forty. 

Of our trees, producing conspicuous flowers, such 
as the Cucumber-tree {^Magnolia aciiininatd), and the 



176 THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

Tulip-tree {Lhdodejidron tulipiferd), there are but few 
specimens in the vicinity of the Falls. Abbe Provan- 
cher found the former growing at or near Clifton, 
and one magnificent specimen of the latter may be 
pointed out on Goat Island. In the re-forestation of 
the denuded portions of the Island due observance 
to the planting of these beautiful American trees should 
be had. 

Four Maples are represented upon the Island :-— 
Ac CI' saccliarinum, A. rubriun, A. dasycarpum and A. 
spicatum. The first of these, the Sugar-maple, is per- 
haps the most abundant tree upon the Island. Five 
species of Sumach {Rlius) grow upon the Island or 
along the margin of the river. Our native Plum 
{Pi'uniis Americana) and two Cherries {^Primus Virgini- 
ana and P. serotina) belong either to the Island or 
the mainland, the latter, the Black-cherry of the 
lumberman, attaining upon the Island a wonderful 
development. Near the gorge of the river, on either 
side, but not upon the Island, the Crab-apple (Pyriis 
coronaria) abounds, diffusing in the early days of June 
its unequaled fragrance upon the air. 

Three species of Thorn {^Cratcegus coccinea, C. to- 
mentosa and C. Crus-galli), are to be met with upon 
Goat Island, adding in May and June, no small part to 
the floral magnificence of the season. Six species of 
Cornel, including the flowering Dog-wood {Cornus 
fiorida), two elders {Sambiicus Canadensis and vS. 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 



177 



pubeiis) and six Viburnums ( V. Opidus, ^^. aceiHfolium, 
V. pubescens, V. dentatum^ V. niidtun, and V. Lcn~ 
togd) either on the Island or the mainland, contribute 
greatly, in the spring and summer months, to enlarge 
and diversify the display. 

To find the Sassafras one must go down along the 
river as far as the whirlpool. He will there meet with it, 
but not in profusion, on either side of the river. Our 
other native laurel, the Spice-wood {Lindcra Benzion) 
is to be found handsomely represented on Goat Island. 

Two species of Ash, the white and black, {Fraxi- 
mus Americana and F. sanibiicifolid) are among the 
trees of the Island, and are to be met elsewhere in 
abundance. 

The only species of Linden or Bass-wood, which 
belongs to the vicinity, is the familiar one, Tdia Ameri- 
cana. It is plentiful upon the Island and of extraor- 
dinary size and beauty. 

Of nut-producing trees the following occur : 

The Butternut i^Juglans cinerea) , the Black walnut 
(J- ^ligra), the white Hickory {^Carya alba), the hairy 
Hickory ((7. to7nentosa), the pignut Hickory (C.porcina), 
and the bitter Hickory (C. amard), the Beech 
(Fagiis ferriiginea) , the Chestnut {Castanea vtdgaris), 
the white Oak {Quercus alba), the post Oak {Q. obtusi- 
loba), the Chestnut-oak {Q. Middenbergii), the Bur-oak 
{Q. macroc arp a) , the dwarf Chestnut-oak i^Q.prinoides), 
the red Oak [Q. rubra), the scarlet Oak (0. coccinea), 



178 THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

the Quercitron-oak (Q. tinctorid), and the Pin-oak 
(2- pahtstris). 

Two speeies of Elm {Ulniiis Americana and U. 
fulva), three Birches {Betuia lenta, B. liitea and B. 
papyracca) , one Alder (^/;/?/j incana) , six native Willows 
(^Salix nigra, S. lucida, S. discolor, S. rostrata, S. 
petioiaris dA\d cordatd), and four Poplars {Popidus tre- 
imd aides, P. grandidentata, P. monolifera and P. 
balsaniifera v. candicans), are embraced within the 
Sylva of Niagara. 

Of the cone-bearing family the number of species is 
not as great as might be expected. They are only 
six, distributed in five genera, as follows : 

The White-cedar {TJiuja occidentalism, the most 
abundant of the evergreens at Niagara, the Red-cedar 
{Juniperiis Virginiana) , unfortunately disappearing, the 
Juniper {J. coniviunis), the American Yew or 
Ground-hemlock {Taxus baccata v. Canadejisis) , the 
White-pine {Pinus Sti^obus), -Sind the common Hemlock- 
spruce, {Tsiiga Canadensis^. The two last named spe- 
cies are not so plentiful upon the Island as their beauty 
demands. They should be at once and largely re- 
planted. 

Of the herbs, producing showy flowers, which are to 
be found upon the Island, the following may be men- 
tioned, which by their profusion as well as beauty, make 
it in spring time and early summer, a natural flower- 
garden, wild indeed, but wonderfully beautiful: — 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. I /Q 

Our two Liverworts or Squirrel-cups {^Hepatica 
acittiloba and H. triloba), scarcely distinguishable 
from one another, except by the leaf, but of an infinite 
variety of color. 

The dioecious Meadow Rue [Thalictnun dioicuni), 
more noticable because of the peculiar beauty of its foli- 
age than its conspicuousness of flower. As graceful as 
a fern. 

The wild Columbine {Aquilcgia Canadensis) , to be 
found on the Island, yet more abundantly along the 
chasm, where it displays its elegant blossoms of scarlet 
and gold, far beyond the reach of the most venture- 
some. 

The May Apple {Podophyllum peltatiim) , a plant 
singular both in flower and leaf, but beautiful and 
always arresting attention. 

The Blood-root [Sangninaria Canadensis), a plant 
lifting up its large, clear white flower and its solitary 
leaf in the early days of spring. 

Squirrel-corn and Dutchman's breeches [Diclytra 
Canadensis and D. cuctdlaria) . Strange plants, but of 
great gracefulness and beauty. Abundant on the Island 
early in May. The former species, rich with the odor 
of hyacinths. 

Of the spring-flowering CrucifercB, to be found 
upon the Island, the following deserve to be men- 
tioned as notable for their abundance and beauty : — 
The Crinkle-root {Dentaria diphylld), the Spring-cress 



l8o THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

{^Cardamine rhoinboidea, v. purptired), and the Rock- 
cress {^Arabis lyratd). 

As many as four violets abound upon the Island 
and its vicinity, adding their charms to the beauty of the 
month of May — Viola cucullata, V. rostrata, V. pubes- 
cens, and V. Canadensis , the last, remarkable among 
the American species, for its fragrance as well as 
gracefulness. 

The Spring-beauty {^Claytonia Caroliniana) , the 
large, native Cranesbill [Gerafiiuni inacidatiuii) , the 
Virginian Saxifrage {Saxifraga Virginiensis, the two 
Mitre-worts {Tiarella eordifolia and Mitella diphylld), 
the spreading Phlox {P. divaricata), the creeping 
Greek Valerian {Polenioniiun repta7is), now rather 
rare, the American Dog-tooth Violet or Adder's- 
tongue {Erytlironinni Aniericannni), the large-flowered 
Bell-wort {Uvidaria grajidiflora) , the Indian Turnip 
{AriscEnia triphylla, and the two Trilliums (T. grandi- 
floi'tnn and T. erectuni), add largely to the spring con- 
tingent of attractive and conspicuous plants. 

Later in the season, one may find the shrubby St. 
John's Wort {Hypericnni Kahnianiun) , and one of the 
most graceful species of Lobelia (Z. Kalniii), each 
rejoicing in a damp situation, and each, quite 
probably, discovered at the Falls, by Bishop Kalm, 
nearly a century and a half ago, and introduced by 
him, from that locality, to the notice of the botanical 
world. The name of the discoverer of these interest- 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. l8l 

ing plants is worthily commemorated in those which 
the great Linnaeus bestowed upon them. 

The summer time brings forward many attractive 
forms — the Grass of Parnassus {Parnassia Carohniana) , 
the Painted-Cup {Castiileia coccinea), an occasional 
lily, an orchid or two, but of no great beauty, 
the Hare-bell {Campanula rotuiidifolia) , and a large 
array of annuals. 

Nor is the autumnal Flora of Goat Island uninter- 
esting. Golden-rods {Solidago sp.). Sun-flowers 
{Helianthiis sp.), Star-flowers (yii"/^r sp.), the Downy 
Thistle {Cniciis discolor), and, at last, the triumph of 
October and the dying year, the shorn Gentian (Geii- 
tiana detonsa), its graceful blossoms as blue as the 
summer skies. 

In the region of the Falls, but not upon Goat 
Island itself, some plants of great beauty have been' 
detected. Below the Whirlpool, two species of Bluets 
or Innocence {Houstonia ccerulea and H. piirpiired), 
are to be observed, the rare Liatris cylindracca, Apocy- 
nuni androsceinifolium, the orange-colored Milkweed 
{Asclepias tuber osa), the Fire-lily {Liliiiui PJiiladel- 
phiciint), the large, yellow Lady's slipper (Cypri- 
pedium pubescens), the beautiful, low-growing Morning 
Glory {Convolvidus spithamceus) , and wild Roses, as 
fragrant as beautiful. 

The ferns of Goat Island and the region of the 
Falls are numerous. Among them may be men- 



Ib2 THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

tioned : — The Ostrich-fern {Onoclea Stnitliiopteris) ,\h.^ 
Sensitive-fern (O. sensibilis), the Royal-fern {Osmiinda 
regalis), the Interrupted-fern i^O . intervupta) , the Cin- 
namon-fern ((9. cinnanionied), the Bladder-fern {Cystop- 
teris biilbiferd), Shield-ferns, of various species [As- 
pidiiun Noveboracense^A. Thelypteris, A. spinulosiirn^A. 
adstatiiin, A. Goldiamun, A. inargiiiale, A. Lone /litis), 
and the Christmas-fern {A. aclirostidwides) , the Beech- 
fern (^Piiegopteris Dryoptcris), only found at the Devil's 
Hole, the Walking-fern {Caniptosorus rliyzopJiy litis), 
four Spleen-worts {Aspleniiim Trichonianes, A. ebe- 
neuin,dh\xnddint at Lewiston, A. achrostichoidcs and 
A. Filix-fcemind) , scarcely to be excelled in grace by 
any species, two Cliff-brakes {Pellcea gracilis and P. 
atropiirpurea) ,\hQ Common-brake, world-wide in its dis- 
tribution {Ptcris aqiiilina), the American Maiden- 
hair {Adiantiuji pedatiun), and the common Polypody 
{Polypodiiiin vulgar e), peering, in many places, .over the 
edge of the chasm into the depths below. 

Of the Fauna of Niagara very much cannot be 
said. All the larger Mammalia, which abounded in 
the region whilst it was still the possession of the 
red man, have long since disappeared. It seems 
almost as though they could never have resorted, 
habitually, to Goat Island. The access to it of the 
elk, the red deer, the bear, the panther, the lynx, the 
fox and the wolf, common enough in the neighbor- 
hood, must always have been difficult, and their return 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. loj 

to the mainland almost impossible. At the present 
time the quadrupeds inhabiting the Island are probably 
only three, the Black-squirrel, the Red-squirrel and 
the Striped Squirrel or Chipmunk. These maybe seen, 
almost any spring or summer day, disporting them- 
selves, without regard to the presence of man, in their 
leafy coverts. 

The birds affecting the Island and the gorge are 
not to be distinguished, in species, from those of the 
mainland. But, as would be expected, environment 
makes some species rare and others plentiful. The 
Robin {Ticrdiis niigratorioits)^ the Oriole (^Icterus Bal- 
timore), the Blue-bird {Sialia Wiisonii) and the Gold- 
finch {^Carditelis tristis), find so much of their food 
supply in door yards and cultivated land, that they are 
to be seen less frequently upon the Island or within 
the gorge, than elsewhere in the neighborhood. On the 
other hand, birds of the deep and silent woods, like 
the Vireos, Wilson's Thrush [Tardus fuse esc ens), the 
Wood-thrush [Turdus inustelinus) , and the Cat-bird, 
[Mimus Carolinensis) , are almost always to be seen and 
heard in the vicinity of the Falls or river. 

Birds of the crow family, such as the common 
Crow, the Purple Grackle and the Blue-jay were prob- 
ably, at one time, plentiful; but they are now rarely 
seen, except as they are passing over from one side of 
the river to the other. Our common hawks may be 
included in the same remark. 



184 THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. 

Summer or winter, numerous gulls may be seen 
hovering over the river, between its high banks, below 
the Falls. 

Late in the autumn, after other birds have taken 
their flight, in the thick spray of the Red-cedars, great 
flocks of Cedar-birds {Amphclis ccdronuii) are to be 
noticed, feeding socially upon the plentiful sweet 
berries of the tree. Probably they remain until the 
supply of food is exhausted. 

The Bald-headed Eagle [HalicEtiis leucoccplialits) 
was once a frequenter of the region of the cataract, 
but is now seldom seen. Probably he has learned 
to be wary and not unnecessarily to expose himself to 
the aim of the collecting naturalist. But, however that 
may be, without doubt the waters below the Falls were 
once a favorite resort to him. He was a devourer 
of fish, and, although powerful of claw and pinion, he 
did not disdain to save his strength by feeding upon 
such as had been killed or stunned in their passage 
over the Falls. 

Of the birds of our region, which seem to fear the 
presence of man, and therefore retire to the unfre- 
quented woods, it may be said that they are really 
plentiful in the shady nooks and recesses with which 
the gorge of the river abounds. The naturalist, who 
would wish to make them a study, can do so, satisfac- 
torily, if he will but enter the woods at the Whirlpool or 
at Foster's Flat and patiently and quietly await their 



THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF NIAGARA FALLS. I 85 

appearance. It is hardly possible that such a retiring 
species as the Indigo-bird {Cyanospiza cyancd) will fail 
to reward his watchfulness, or that a Scarlet Tanager 
{Pyranga rubra) will not soon flash like a meteor 
before his eyes. Likely enough the Kingfisher 
[Ceryle Alcyon), will leave his silent perch and with a 
harsh cry dart down upon his scaly prey. Here, where 
the thick leaves make a twilight, even at mid-day, the 
attentive ear of the student of our birds will listen, with 
delight, to the bell-like notes of the Wood-thrush, or 
to the sweet cadences of the Cat-bird's real song. 



7^ S : IT : R USmmB : BY. 




THE great North-west has two ways of reaching 
tide-water. It filters down the Mississippi, los- 
ing impetus as it goes southward, until, too much 
enervated to dig itself a channel, it rolls sluggishly on 
between artificial levees and slips unobtrusively into the 
Gulf by a dozen different passages. The farther south 
it goes the more irresponsible it becomes and the more 
need it has of assistance. To get it safely emptied is a 
constant car^, calling for perpetual labor and congres- 
sional appropriations. At the least neglect it slops 
lazily over, and settles down on the surrounding coun- 
try. 

How differently it comes East, navigating the great 
western lakes one after another, and finally crowding 
impetuously into the Niagara River and over its preci- 
pice with a roar and a jarring crash, and then out 
through Ontario and the swift St. Lawrence to the 
Ocean ! Journeying southward it blends imperceptibly 
with the region it traverses, so that it is hard to say 
where the west leaves off and the south begins. But 
it drops down upon the East with an enormous plunge 



As IT RUSHES BY. 1 8/ 

that leaves no doubt of the whereabouts of the line of 
demarcation. Beyond Niagara is the West. Here 
the East begins, equal to the West in energy and vim, 
but different The West never merges with the East 
as it does with the South. It comes to Niagara in 
overwhelming force and thunders at its gates, and then 
rolls off North-easterly and out through the British 
provinces. It asks nothing of man except to be let 
alone. It has dug its own channel with its own tools, 
and formed itself a basin of ample size to hold it. It 
is responsible, self-reliant, fully able to take care of it- 
self, and ever ready to do any odd jobs that offer as it 
surges along. It seems to gather energy from the in- 
vigorating influences that meet it in its progress. 

Colonel IngersoU came to Niagara one day and 
looked at the tribute of the great Northwest as it 
surged by, and said : " Niagara Falls is a dangerous 
place." 

There was disparagement in the Colonel's tone, and 
disparagement is something to which Niagara is not 
much used. Whatever native it was that heard him 
stared and asked : '' Do you mean the hackmen ? " 

" No ! " said the eminent orator. '' I mean those 
great rushing waters. There is nothing attractive to 
me in them. They are really dangerous. There is so 
much noise, so much tumult. It is simply a mighty 
force of nature, one of those tremendous powers 
which is to be feared for its danger." 



1 88 AS IT RUSHES BY. 

The native's eyebrows went up at that. It is true 
enough that the Niagara River is not one that a cau- 
tious person would care to navigate, particularly above 
the Falls, but the Colonel, though not anchored to 
anything, was at least on firm land. The reflection 
suggested itself, that he had imperfectly diagnosed 
his own sensations, and that his dissatisfaction, which 
was obviously genuine, really sprung from the tradi- 
tional disagreement of two of a trade. How could an 
orator be edified by a tone besides which his own 
best utterance was but a squeak ? To make impres- 
sions is the orator's business, not to receive them. But 
at Niagara, Nature does the talking and has her say 
out, and man's part is to listen and to digest. It was 
a high compliment that the great talker paid to the river 
by his instinctive disapproval, and perfectly consistent 
with his point of view were his continuing remarks : 

" What I like in Nature is a cultivated field where 
men can work in the free, open air ; where there is 
quiet and repose, not turmoil, strife, tumult, fearful 
roar, or struggle for mastery. I do not like the crowded, 
stuffy workshop where life is a slavery and drudgery, 
where men are slaves. Give me the calm, cultivated 
land of waving grain, of flowers, of happiness." 

So spoke the man of super-abundant energy, not 
unnaturally preferring scenes that seem to require 
some stirring up to those where all the requisite agita- 
tion comes ready furnished to hand. It is true that to 



AS IT RUSHES BY. 1 89 

the professional regulator, Niagara bristles with dis- 
couragement. There is comparatively little left there 
for man to do. To keep his hands off and let Nature 
take her course is the chief boon that is asked of him. 
But it is about the last place in the world to be com- 
pared to a stuffy workshop where men are slaves. 
Indeed the very pith of its contrast to the ** cultivated 
land of waving grain " lies in the absence here of con- 
spicuous signs of human labor. Work was tradition- 
ally imposed upon man for his sins. Even if the natural 
man is not rightfully lazy, he is at least entitled to love 
leisure, and prefer the minimum of toil. Surely Nia- 
gara is fit to refresh his jaded spirit. If he sighs at the 
foot of the pyramids to think of the vast industry that was 
the cost of their construction, he is conversely entitled to 
exult at the resistless might of the Niagara River emp- 
tying its floods into its self-chiseled gorge. Only the 
planets wandering m their courses, harnessed to the 
sun, are so fit to stir an exultation of repose. Labori- 
ous man sits on our river's brink and meditates on the 
great spectacle of labor saved. The Falls just go 
themselves. Within the memory of man it has never 
been found needful even in the dryest times to operate 
them by artificial means. In sight or out of sight 
there is no apparatus for pumping water back into 
Lake Erie to keep the cataract going. Neither has it 
ever been found necessary to dam the lake to keep the 
water from running out, or to bail it out to keep it 



190 AS IT RUSHES BY. 

from running over. Nature has done everything. 
The lake is always full, the river never ceases to drain 
it. The precipice that the torrent goes over is not 
absolutely permanent or changeless, but like the rest 
of the apparatus it takes care of itself, asking nothing 
of man but to stand from under when its features shift. 

The great lesson of Niagara is to maintain a re- 
spectful attitude towards Nature. She is irresistible ; not 
to be thwarted, not to be turned aside. It is our affair 
to study her courses, to get out of her way when she 
wants the whole road, and to make her do our work 
by the simple expedient of making our desires consis- 
tent with her methods. . 

In this feature of the Falls lie their special adapta- 
tion to be gazed upon by young persons who have 
just entered the married state and assumed the more 
serious burdens of life. It is not accident that brings 
the newly married to Niagara. It is instinct. It is 
good for them to be here, and some subtle influence 
has taught them to know it. Seeking for entertain- 
ment not to be laboriously won, but of a sort that 
stimulates the faculties while it promotes reflection, 
they find it here. The river entertains them. It speaks 
to them in continuous discourse without exacting any 
reply. It distracts their attention gently from one 
another, which is a kindness, and when they speak to- 
gether it prevents alien ears from overhearing what 
they say. It is uniformly kind to them- — so long as 



AS IT RUSHES BY. I9I 

they hug the bank — and then it gives them so many 
useful points for the shaping of their future destinies ! 
It teaches them to let things slide when oppo- 
sition will do no good. It stands to them for the re- 
sistless stream of life which sweeps us all over its falls 
first or last, so that it pays us to float tranquilly while 
we may and not mar so brief a passage with alterca- 
tion. The individuality of so impetuous a flood can 
hardly fail to make its impression on them, suggest- 
ing that every individuality, even that of a married 
woman, has a right to its own development, and comes 
swifter and safer to a tranquil haven if left reasonably 
i'rce to follow, out its natural course. 

But only dense men bully their wives anyway, and 
possibly such men are too impervious to instruction to 
gather the wisdom of Niagara as it rushes by. But 
its wisdom is always there for those who can seize it, 
and for all coming time its banks promise to be trod 
by men and women who have need at least to try. 



J' 






.#-'• 




FOR the first time in the history of Niagara Falls, 
attractions other than those furnished by nature 
are offered ; not only to the mere pleasure seeker, but 
to the scientific world generally, in the attempt that is 
now being made to utilize some small portion of the 
power of the great cataract on a scale that is vast 
compared to all previous attempts at such utilization. 
This is to be done not by diminishing the beauty of the 
Falls, but by adding to what would otherwise attract 
the visitor to the place, the visible progress of a gi- 
gantic engineering enterprise that has no precedent in 
the civilized world or that can be compared to any of 
the . other similar works of man in the results that 
may flow from the venture. 

"What is the power of Niagara Falls ?" 

One fantastic computation, perhaps reliable, sets it 

down comparatively as being so great that if all the coal 

mined in the world each day should be burned to make 

steam, it would barely suffice to operate pumping 



194 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 

machinery, to pump back the water from the lower 
river to supply what passes from Lake Erie into Lake 
Ontario at the Falls of Niagara. The difference of level 
between the still water above the Rapids and the River 
at the base of the Falls is about 216 feet. If we could 
with certainty determine just how much water per 
second passes the Falls, knowing the difference of level, 
every cubic foot per second would represent theoreti- 
cally about 26 H. P., or if used to operate water wheels 
of 75 per cent, efficiency, each foot per second would 
be worth in power about 18 H. P. Unfortunately the 
whole head cannot be used. The mills on the banks 
below the Falls which are fed by the hydraulic canal 
use only 90 to 100 feet fall, or even less, and all the 
water that passes through such wheels gives power 
due to the fall used, and the remaining fall is at present 
wasted so far as its power is concerned. The work 
being done by the Cataract Construction Company 
for the Niagara Falls Power Company, whereby the 
power is to be developed above the American Rapids 
is based upon power that is obtainable by means of a 
tunnel for a tail race, the hydrauhc slope of which 
leaves, with certainty, only about 140 feet available as 
a working head, and every cubic foot of water per 
second must be made to yield not less than 12 H. P. 
In the Census Report of 1880, two large folio vol- 
umes were devoted to the water powers of the United 
States, and that of Niagara Falls is credited with a 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. I95 

theoretical value of 5,878,100 H. P., representing in 
fuel consumption (at three pounds of coal per horse 
power per hour) about 211,611 tons of coal per day. 
The mills already located on the bank of the stream and 
fed by the hydraulic canal take from the Falls at present 
about 6,000 H. P., so that 200,000 H, P. more may be 
taken for man's use and leave 5,678,100 H. P. to be 
represented by the stream that will still pour over the 
crest of the Falls. The water to be taken represents 
an insignificant amount as compared with the whole 
torrent; in fact the daily fluctuation of the stream, 
owing to the action of the wind and other causes, 
while seeming to make little change in the water level 
of the upper river, still causes a far greater increase or 
diminution from time to time in the water passing 
over the crest than will possibly occur continuously by 
the abstraction of all the power that can be utilized 
by man. 

To meet the demand for some reliable information 
as to what is proposed by the Niagara Falls Power 
Company, the main features of the enterprise will be 
given so far as they can be stated in advance of the 
actual completion of the works themselves, which are 
being erected to permit extension in accordance with 
the progress of the arts during the time of erection, and 
to meet the wants of those who will seek the neigh- 
borhood of the Falls as an advantageous location for 
mechanical, chemical and metallurgical industries. 



196 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA'S POWER. 

Beyond this local supply, time alone can solve the 
question of just how far the power of Niagara Falls can 
be carried profitably. What is being done in prepar- 
ing for long distance transmission is in perfect harmony 
with the use of the power at the Falls, and many 
cities of the State may soon share with Buffalo the 
benefits of cheap power electrically transmitted from 
Niagara. 

The chief objects of interest connected with the new 
development of power at Niagara Falls are: the tun- 
nel, now finished for 7,000 feet of its length; the main 
canal to carry water to the wheels; the excavation 
that is being made to receive the ten water wheels each 
of 5,000 H. P., which will generate the electricity 
by which to transmit power to a distance or to works 
near by; and the extensive establishment of the Niagara 
Falls Paper Co., the first to anticipate the new develop- 
ment and to risk, before the completion of the tunnel, the 
erection of an industrial plant that will at the out- 
set use 3,000 H. P. generated by three separate 
wheels, with the capability of extending to six or seven 
thousand horse power ; all of the wheels required for 
this establishment, designed and built in America, be- 
ing under the personal control of the paper company. 

The tunnel is a remarkable piece of engineering 
work, over a mile and a quarter long, the upper end 
lying more than i 50 feet below the inlet canal, and 
thence sloping gradually towards the lower river where 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. I97 

its discharge portal is visible a short distance below 
the Upper Suspension Bridge adjacent to the Govern- 
ment Reservation. The cross-section of this tunnel is 




INLET CANAL AND NIAGARA RIVER, 

of horse-shoe form, and is lined with brick throughout, 
the sides and roof being of the best quality of hard 
burnt brick, the concave floor or invert being paved 
with vitrified brick of great endurance. It is without 
curve in its entire length of 7,000 feet but its slope is 
not entirely unitorm, being at the rate of 4 feet per 
1,000 at the upper end, and the lower half sloping 
approximately at the rate of 7 feet to the 1 ,000 to- 



198 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA'S POWER. 

wards the mouth, where for some few hundred feet 
the floor slopes still more rapidly and is plated on the 
bottom and sides with steel, forming a wavehke curve 
that brings the extreme end a number of feet below 
the mean water level of the river. The back water 
standing in the tunnel at the mouth presents a water 
cushion to the outgoing stream as it leaves the tunnel 
and passes the open cut beyond the portal. An 
hydraulic gradient of seven feet to the thousand has 
been assumed as necessary to give the required velocity 
to the out-going water, hence the tunnel in its length 
of 7,000 feet already built consumes practically about 
49 feet of the total difference of level between the 
upper and the lower river. 

The nature of the rock through which the great 
tunnel was driven necessitated careful support of the 
roof and side walls by strong timbers, with a final 
lining of brick of sufficient thickness to insure dura- 
bility. During the progress of this work, careful su- 
pervision of the hydraulic cement used, resulted in a 
structure in which the joints are as strong or stronger 
than the very excellent quality of bricks used in the 
lining. This was proven whenever it became necess- 
ary to cut through the walls to make lateral connect- 
ions, the hard brick yielding more readily than the 
cement. 

To obtain a comparative estimate of the durability 
of the building material used in the various parts of 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. I99 

the work, numerous specimens of cement mixtures, 
as well as the bricks and stones required were sub- 
jected to the action of a sand blast, peculiarly ar- 
ranged, so that a comparison was made of the ability 
of the material to stand attrition was tested by the 
projection of a given weight of sand driven under uni- 
form pressure of blast, in often repeated trials, care- 
fully weighing the specimen between each blast to de- 
termine the amount of material removed by the at- 
trition of the sand. Before this test was adopted as 
reliable a succession of experiments demonstrated that 
with uniform material treated uniformly, a uniform 
amount of wear was shown to occur — as for example, 
in applying the sand blast test under the same con- 
ditions to various qualities of plate glass. 

Without going into the detail of these experiments 
or giving the actual results, it is to be understood that 
the experiments so tried enabled the engineers to ar- 
range the material in the progressive scale as to dura- 
bility, also to confirm, with exactness, their judgment 
as to what mixtures of sand and cement, and with what ' 
treatment the condition equivalent to the strength of 
granite or brick or any other material to be united had 
been obtained. The tests so applied were conclusive 
as to the standing quality of each material and the 
method in which it was used in all cases. The adopt- 
ion of vitrified brick for those places liable to be sub- 
jected to the greatest wear was warranted by the fact 



200 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 

that such bricks stand at the top of the Hst of the 
materials used, resisting the sand blast and therefore 
well fitted to resist any wearing action of sand or other 
material rapidly driven through the tunnel by the 
speed of the current. 

The Power House on the west bank of the great 
canal is to be built of stone in harmony with the stone 
work of the walls of the canal itself, and lined with 
enamelled brick. The steel roof trusses of over 
60 feet span rest upon steel posts that serve to carry 
the girders to sustain an electric traveling crane of 50 
tons capacity. At the north end of the Power House 
a massive stone building of much greater width will 
form a prolongation to the north with an L extension 
eastward up to the edge of the main canal. This L 
and the extension of the Power House, forming the 
entrance front of the building, will present gable ends 
to the east and west. To the left of the entrance 
archway, the offices, four stories in height, will be lo- 
cated wholly in the L, while to the right, including the 
archway, the whole height of the Power House to which 
it is attached consists of one large room in which the 
50-ton traveling crane commands the entire floor. An 
arched portal or main doorway of great height forms the 
entrance vestibule. Cars loaded to the limit permissible 
on the railroad can pass through this vestibule and then 
through a lower arch into the main Povv^er House, where 
1.be load can be handled by the traveling crane. Over 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 20I 

this second doorway ,whicn in summer will be closed with 
iron grill work and in winter by doors, the archstoncs 
radiate fan-like to the roof of the main vestibule, and in 
the centre of these radiating archstones will be displayed 
as a medallion the semblance of the seal of the Com- 
pany, designed by Frederick McMonnies, the American 
Sculptor. It represents the Indian chief Ni-a-ga-ra 
standing in his canoe, paddle in hand, shooting the 
rapids. The circular border is alternately the Mus- 
calonge, the King-fish of the river, and the prevailing 
fossil shells of the Niagara group, dcltJiyis Niagarensis . 
A doorway through the left wall of the vestibule gives 
entrance to the offices which occupy the four-story 
building on the canal, and also gives access to visitors 
who, passing the ticket office, can by an easy flight of 
stairs gain a platform level with the second story of the 
office building and thence by a second short flight of 
steps gain a bridge that crosses the great end room 
of the power station. From this bridge a view can be 
obtained of the electrical generators and of the various 
machinery required to effect the transformations from 
the alternating current of high potential to currents 
suited to the various uses, with the capability of de- 
livery in just such quantity and force of current as may 
be required for the purposes to which electricity can be 
applied. 

The electric generators in the Power House will of 
themselves show perhaps little that is especially attrac- 



202 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 



tive, either as to massive proportions or intricate and 
curious machineiy , but they will be wonderful foi their 
simpHcity, and the thoughtful visitor will be interested to 
know that each of the 80 odd thousand pounds of steel 
to be seen rapidly revolving like gigantic spinning 
tops is perhaps delivering a current of ten or twenty 
thousand volts pressure directly by cables that are 
concealed beneath the floor of the Power House, and 




INTERIOR OF TUNNEL. 



thence carried into an underground space below the 
bridge upon which the visitor will stand. Nearby will 
be seen the switch-boards with all the dangerous con- 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 203 

ductors entirely concealed from view. The operators 
handling the distributing devices will do so by means 
of silk cords attached to the various levers and other 
devices that must be moved to effect the distribution 
of the current. 

In this room will be arranged all those instruments 
that will enable the electricians in charge to know ex- 
actly what is occurring at every part of the electrical 
system. Every centre of distribution, whether it is 
nearby or a hundred miles away, will be in direct 
communication and visibly record its condition to 
guide the operators in this Power House. There the 
currents can be controlled and the speed of the wheels 
regulated to suit the conditions required. Massive re- 
sistance coils will be provided to enable any one of these 
5,000 H. P. generators to exhaust its entire power in 
heat or be instantly switched into the line requiring 
the additional supply. 

From the Power House underground conduits will 
extend, in which on insulated benches on either side 
will be arranged all the distributing conductors, and 
through the main conduit will be passed an electric 
car upon which the linemen can ride between wire 
screens that protect them from the dangerous currents 
between which they pass, and yet allow every portion 
of the Hne, brilliantly illuminated by the passing car, to 
be mspected with absolute safety. Arrangements will 
be made whereby the current can be deflected from 



204 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 

one side of the conduit to the other in order that 
access may be given for attachments or changes at any 
point of the line. The extension of this conduit will 
be first through the ground owned by the company, 
and thence on a smaller scale through Tonawanda to 
Buffalo, or a pole line similar to those in use in long 
distance transmissions in Europe will be erected. 

It is the intention of the Company to employ a 
current of high potential and to so protect its transmis- 
sion as to make it absolutely safe to human life and 
absolutely reliable in its continuity to those manufact- 
urers at a distance who, renting the power, must feel 
that the supply can be relied upon. In no single case 
will any one machine or device be depended upon for 
power or for transmission; always spare machinery in 
excess of the actual need will be provided to permit 
stoppage for alterations or repairs. 

Electricity has been adopted as the means of dis- 
tributing the power from the central stations as prom- 
ising the least loss of power, and the minimum cost 
in devices for its transmission. Compressed air may 
be used where advantageous. 

When the Power House is finished to its ultimate 
length of over 400 ft., the greatest interest will centre 
in the ten great generators, each of 5,000 H. P., and 
each driven by a separate water wheel system . From 
the inspecting bridge, looking south along the building 
at intervals of about 40 ft. on the east wall towards 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S JPOWER. 205 

the canal, that is to the left of the observer, machinery 
will be seen that is placed to operate the sluice gates 
which are used to partly regulate the water admitted 
to the wheels, or when need be, to shut off the whole 
supply. The actual regulation of the speed of the 
wheels will be effected at the wheels themselves by 
balanced gates which control the amount of water 
escaping from them, not by regulating the admission 
of water to the wheels. The amount of water 
required for each wheel is about 25,000 cubic ft. 
per minute, flowing to the wheels through channels from 
the main canal, each 17 ft. deep by 14 ft. wide, walled 
up of dressed stone with an average depth of water of 
about 12 ft. The position of these channels will be 
indicated by the gate machinery only, as otherwise 
they are hidden from view, beneath the floor Ten 
such channels are devoted to the Power House, 
while at suitable intervals on the main canal many 
other channels of similar size are provided for future 
use. Two gateways arranged with similar operating 
machinery to that in the Power House will control the 
admission of water to the long canal which feeds the 
Niagara Falls Paper Company's extensive works. 

Weeds, grass and floating matter that might pass 
into the wheels and obstruct them are prevented from 
entering the inlet channels by means of racks or iron 
gratings, which are located at the mouth of each one 
of the entrance canals and arranged in such manner as 




Transverse Sketcli Showing Inlet from Main Canal. 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 20/ 

to admit the floatage to be easily raked off and the 
water-way kept clear. The sluice gates already men- 
tioned to roughly govern the water that passes to the 
wheels are of steel moving in planed cast iron guides, 
and resting against sets of loose rollers which permit 
easy movement of each gate under the enormous 
pressure of 75 tons of water that has to be restrained 
when closed. 

Before describing the wheels that are to be used 
in the Power House it may be well to call atten- 
tion to the fact that the conditions controlling the 
use of Niagara Falls for motive power are peculiar. 
The land on the American side of the river is a vast 
plain extending for miles in every direction. The Ni- 
agara River below Buffalo flows through this plain, 
a broad, comparatively quiet stream, breaking into 
rapids at the head of Goat Island, and fi-om thence for 
a distance of three-quarters of a mile, the foaming tor- 
rent falling a number of feet reaches the crest of the 
fall to take its leap of 160 feet into the narrow gorge 
of the lower river. The deep cut below the Cataract 
into which this torrent pours has been formed by the 
gradual wearing away of the rocks of the Niagara 
group, as the breast of this mighty barrier has for 
ages past crept little by little towards its present site. 
The point where the Niagara Falls Power Co. 
must take the water from the still pool above the 
rapids is a mile and a quarter from the gorge below 



2o8 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA'S POWER. 

the Falls at its nearest point. The appurtenances of 
manufacturing are thus far removed from the Falls 
and its scenery. To develop power on the shore of 
the upper river, the water from wheels located in deep 
pits will be carried away through the seven thousand feet 
of tunnel that passes under the City of Niagara Falls, as 
already mentioned, and this tunnel is expected to de- 
velop 100,000 horse power with wheels that operate 
under an average of from 136 to 140 ft. head. In or- 
dinary locations where natural differences of level in 
land exist, a water course raised above extensive 
plains available for building factories or mills, water 
wheels of any kind convenient for the purpose may be 
located close to the machinery that is to be driven, 
and the choice of the kind of wheel to be used is less 
restricted than in the present case. In California the 
simple and efficient Pelton wheel, so often mentioned 
as suitable for Niagara Falls, finds conditions exactly 
suited to its use, with unlimited space for its applica- 
tion. 

Any wheel, however, with horizontal axis, buried 
150 feet underground in restricted space, will need 
transmitting gearing and shafts or belts to carry the 
power to where it is to be used above, unless the driven 
machinery can be located in excavated chambers below. 
Many kinds of water wheels, such as the ordinary 
overshot, undershot, and other wheels revolving- on 
horizontal axes, can only be used in the positions for 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 209 

which they are designed, while the modern turbines 
may be operated either vertically or horizontally, and 
in many cases the wheel with the vertical axis presents 
peculiar advantages. In the present case, considering 
the great amount of power required at once, with 
perhaps a market for over 50,000 horse power 
in the city of Buffalo alone, units of 5,000 horsepower 
have been adopted after a most careful study of the 
subject in this country and through the Inter- 
national Niagara Commission in Europe. The water 
wheels for each unit are made in pairs on one vertical 
shaft; the water enters the wheel case between the two 
wheels from a vertical penstock made of steel 7 ^ feet 
diameter. The constant water pressure in the penstock 
due to the head of about 136 feet serves to support the 
entire weight of all revolving parts, viz: weight of the 
wheels, the vertical shaft and the revolving parts of the 
generator that is to be driven by the wheel. 

The great steel shaft upon which these wheels are 
placed is solid and of from 11 to 12'' diameter in some 
portions of its length, the solid parts occurring where 
journals are needed at intervals to steady the vertical 
shaft on fixed bearings; the shaft in the long inter- 
vals between the bearings is increased in diameter and 
made hollow for lightness, the hollow part of the shaft 
being formed of carefully rolled tubing, without any 
riveted vertical seams, so as" to give the required 
strength and rigidity with diminished weight, lessening 



2IO THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 

by the stiffness of the tubular shaft the number of sup- 
porting bearings that would otherwise be required for 
a shaft of uniform diameter so employed. 

The mechanical problem to be solved in this case 
is very like that of a steam-ship where the motive 
power in the form of an engine, say 5,000 horse power, 
delivers that power through a long horizontal shaft to 
the propeller at the stern of the vessel, with the differ- 
ence that at Niagara the engine is represented by the 
water wheels and the propeller by the revolving part 
of the generator, and the connecting shaft which is 
horizontal in the steamship is vertical in the case of the 
Niagara power. The arrangement of the machinery 
as adopted reduces the friction to the minimum as all 
the revolving parts, the water wheels, the vertical shaft 
and the revolving portions of the dynamo are all 
supported on a vertical axis and conditioned like a top 
spinning on water, the whole weight of the revolving 
mass being carried by the hydraulic pressure of the 
column of water that gives power to the wheels. 

The accurate governing of the speed of the machin- 
ery is a problem that, has received the most careful at- 
tention and is in this case, met by the use of devices 
that have established their reliability by long service in 
Switzerland, where the wheels for Niagara were de- 
signed. To effect this comparatively accurate main- 
tenance of speed requires a fly wheel as part of the sys- 
tem, this fly wheel being needed to prevent the access- 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 211 

ion or loss of speed when work suddenly varies. For- 
tunately in the present case the fly wheel capacity is 
obtained in the weight of the revolving part of the gen- 
erator and that part alone will be seen in the operation 
of the generators in the Power House. Near to each 
generator will be located the governing machinery, 
which, though seemingly complicated, is nevertheless 
simple in its operation. The weight of the revolving 
part must be great enough in each case and the speed 
per second sufficient to insure over i8 millions of foot 
pounds of work to be stored in the revolving mass, re- 
sisting by inertia any sudden increase or decrease of 
the speed and permitting time for the governing ma- 
chinery to move the gates that control the water es- 
caping from the wheels below. The balls of the re- 
volving governor, very similar to that used upon a 
steam engine, do not directly control the gates them- 
selves, but control the powerful actuating machinery 
that continues to act only so long as a difference or 
variation of speed occurs in the rate of rotation of the 
governor balls, and ceases to act when these balls are 
revolving at their normal speed. 

To insure the best results the specifications fur- 
nished to the builders of the machinery, required 
physical tests of strength so high as to deter some 
manufacturers from bidding, and in construction 
the high tests have been rigidly adhered to with the most 
satisfactory results. Where any doubt existed as to 



212 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 

the kind of material to employ, preference has been 
given to that which would put the durability beyond 
any doubt. This is particularly the case in regard to the 
water-wheels themselves. The design was made with 
the expectation of using the best quality of cast iron, but 
from excessive caution, the order was issued that they 
should be made of bronze of the same quality as is 
used in the heavy propellers for steam ships. This 
adoption of bronze was on account of the failure of 
many of the cast iron wheels under a head of only 90 
to 100 feet in use at Niagara, but the designers of the 
wheels for the Cataract Construction Co. hold that the 
failure of such wheels was due to the form of the 
blades and not to the material, and instanced wheels 
made of cast iron working under very much greater 
head and without any appreciable wear when properly 
proportioned. Bronze, however, was adopted at a very 
great increase of cost to render failure from any cause 
impossible so far as the wheels are concerned. The 
tests of material used in the construction was followed 
by the inspectors, from the mills to the manufacturing 
establishment making the wheels and other machinery, 
with the most careful precision and rigid adherence to 
the requirements of the specification. 

Out of the seeming chaos of the work now littering 
up the ground about the great canal will soon grow 
harmonious order. The Power House in the beginn- 
ing will be extended only to cover three generators 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 2 I 3 

and three sets of water wheels, and power created by 
these wheels will be used to operate the channeling 
machines and the hoisting machinery which will be re- 
quired to continue the excavation of the wheel pit for 
the receipt of the additional wheels and generators ; 
also to continue the driving of the tunnel beyond the 
7,000 ft. station to those points where other wheels 
may be required, either for additional electric power 
or for operating separate wheels under the control of 
manufacturers who rent them. The initial plant re- 
presenting 1 5 ,000 horse power in the Power House 
and 3 ,000 horse power at the paper mill will be but 
part of the early installation. Groups of wheels arranged 
in sets of five to each pit will be arranged to give power 
in blocks of i ,ooo horse power to a single manufactory, 
or blocks of less amounts to establishments that will 
have one wheel in common with two or more. This 
will suit the wants of manufacturers who desire to con- 
trol in a measure their own power and to use it directly 
from the wheels without the intervention of electricity, 
compressed air or other modes of transmission. In 
all cases, however, where power less than 500 horse 
will be wanted, the electrical transmission will be 
resorted to. 

One of the most striking uses of electricity will be 
exemplified in the great metallurgical works which will 
be erected on the bank of the river more than a mile 
away from the central station. In this establishment 



214 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 

electricity will be used as a motive power and also for 
direct application to metallurgical processes, and 
though the power required would be more than suffi- 
cient to warrant the use of wheels devoted wholly to 
this purpose and controlled by the operators, prefer- 
ence has been given to the transmitted power on ac- 
count of its exceeding convenience. It is worthy of 
note that at the present time many of the large estab- 
lishments, both in this country and in Europe, are rec- 
ognizing the advisability of creating their power at one 
locality where fuel can be handled cheaply and water 
for condensation obtained in abundance, the distribution 
of this power being entirely by electricity and the 
use of motors scattered about the establishment 
wherever required. Every great manufacturing es- 
tablishment that has attempted this mode of operation 
has not only continued it, but from a small beginning 
has inc;eased the electrical plant, as offering great ad- 
vantages and convenience, as well as economy. 

A junction railroad six miles in length has been 
constructed through the company's lands to enable all 
the main railroad lines passing Niagara Falls to deliver 
freight or to take goods from the factories to be 
established there. At present steam locomotives are 
used on the Junction road, but in the near future it is 
expected that it will be operated by electricity from 
the central power station. 
' The municipal water works that supply the City of 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 



215 



Niagara Falls, including the lands to be improved by 
the Niagara Falls Power Co., and also by a develop- 
ment company, have been removed from their old lo- 




DISCHARGE PORTAL, 



cation at the basin of the hydraulic canal to a point 
nearer to the new canal above the rapids and will 
eventually be transferred to a point still higher up the 
river where the best water can be obtained. The 
pumping is at present done by steam and will be until 
electricity can be furnished from the Power station. 

A very complete trolley road has been established 
to carry passengers to and from the Falls and to all 



2l6 THL UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA'S POWER. 

points of the City of Niagara Falls. Many convenient 
dwelling houses have been erected by the land im- 
provement companies, and factories are to be built of 
convenient size, each capable of extension as the de- 
mands of the tenants call for additional room. This 
feature of the enterprise will make Niagara Falls 
attractive to manufacturers on account of the cheap 
power and reasonable rent, with no possible geographi- 
cal objection to the location for any of the industries 
that can flourish in the Northern States. Proximity 
to the British possessions, as well as nearness to the 
home markets by rail and by water, with cheap power, 
is attractive, and abundance of labor will flock to a 
locality that has all the advantages incident to one ot 
the wonders of the world and climatic conditions 
that are exceptional for the invigorating healthfulness 
of the air. 

Bulletin No. 34, issued Feb. 26th, 1 891, by the 
Census Bureau, gives information of importance in 
reference to the position occupied by Niagara Falls in 
relation to the population of the country. It must be 
borne in mind that the whole area of the United States, 
considered as a plane of no weight, has its centre of 
area somewheres in Kansas, but the centre of popu- 
lation lies to the west of Niagara Falls, latitude 39° 
11' 56'', longitude 85° 32' 53'', in the southern part 
of Indiana, a little west and south of Greensburgh, 
the county seat of Decatur Co., and twenty miles 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 21/ 

east of Columbus, Ind. This centre of population 
has, in advancing westward since 1799, deviated but 
little in parallel of latitude, oscillating slightly on 
either side of latitude 39, but proceeding westward at 
an average rate of about 50 miles in each decade, 
sometimes less and sometimes more, as between 1850 
and 1 860, when the jump was 81 miles, caused by the 
sudden accession of population to the Pacific Coast. 
Niagara Falls falling to the east of the centre of popu- 
lation, bears a relation to the number of inhabitants in 
two important particulars, first as its being close to the 
densest population, and second, being so situated as to 
have remarkable advantages in railroad and water 
communication by canal, by the lakes, and by all the 
great trunk lines of railroads that run east and west. 
The important consideration in estimating the value 
of this stupendous water power is its ability to distri- 
bute that power where it can be used to the best ad- 
vantage beyond the local development at Niagara 
Falls itself. It is absolutely certain, from what has 
already been done elsewhere, that profitable transmis- 
sion to a distance of 150 miles is only within the ex- 
isting practice of distributed power. This 150 miles 
from Niagara Falls in a straight Hne brings us to 
within ninety miles of the city of New York, and if 
we assume as probable economical transmission to a 
distance of 320 miles, we have an area, including the 
densest population, taking in Columbus, Ohio, touch- 



2l8 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA'S POWER. 

ing Washington, D. C, including Philadelphia and 
New York, and the whole of the states of Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, part of Maryland, the northern part 
of Virg-inia and West Virginia, more than two-thirds 
of Ohio, fully three-quarters of Michigan, beside 
reaching to Montreal in Canada, thus showing that 
the situation of Niagara Falls is phenomenal in its 
ability to distribute the power over an area that 
furnishes the most desirable market for its profitable 
development. If in the near future Chicago can re- 
ceive its power from Niagara, then the whole of 
New England, with the exception of Maine, will come 
within reach of the Falls. Is it possible to conceive 
of a location more nearly central to the densest popu- 
lation and the greatest need for distributed power 
than the location fixed by nature for this develop- 
ment ? Niagara Falls would still be the great Falls 
of the world with a distribution of power more than 
equal to all that the coal mines of Pennsylvania can 
supply. 

Wind and water form the two natural sources of 
power. Water when used with water wheels yields 
its power solely from gravity, and yet, all things con- 
sidered, it is the most economical source of energy. 
Water power alone without some economic mode of 
transmitting its energy has, however, the disadvantage 
of being fixed as to location. As compared to coal it 
is not transportable. Coal mined in Pennsylvannia 



THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARAS POWER. 219 

can be used for power in any locality, the cost of 
power created by the combustion of coal being in- 
fluenced only by the first cost of the fuel and its added 
cost of transportation. Each pound of coal burned 
can yield only some fraction of its total heat value as 
power, and when so used, so far as we know, there 
seems to be no tendency in nature to restore the coal 
that has been burned. Water cannot be transported 
as coal can. The value of a water fall being measured 
by its head, its quantity and its uniformity represents 
the force of gravity only. In using water for power 
we are using the constantly acting attraction of gravi- 
tation. A reliable, uniform water supply, such as is 
ideally represented at Niagara Falls, is the nearest 
obtainable approach to perpetual motion. 

The water yielding its power by gravity at Niagara 
Falls, speeds away to the ocean, where it is vaporized 
and passes inland to be deposited on the rainshed that 
inclines towards the Great Lakes that feed Niagara 
Falls. Niagara Falls owes its power to the orderly 
operation of the laws that govern the Universe. The 
immense size of the lake reservoirs and the volume of 
water stored in them above Niagara Falls, insure 
conditions of stability. That the Niagara River does 
not vary materially from day to day is on account of 
the enormous area drained and the varying climatic 
conditions that effect the condensation of the vapor 
passing inland from the ocean. The water from a 



220 THE UTILIZATION OF NIAGARA S POWER. 

portion of Canada flows down to the lake and each of 
all the watersheds that tend towards the lakes delivers 
the rainfall by rivers and streams that flow into these 
lakes. A small impounded mass of water seldom 
represents a uniform water power, as it is likely to be 
affected by drought or suddenly increased by floods, 
both conditions detrimental to the stream as a source 
of power. Over such an area as is represented by the 
watershed of the Great Lakes these varying climatic 
conditions average themselves, and the rise and fall 
of the water in the lakes is less noticeable on account 
of the area covered, just as the ocean seems not to 
vary except by the tidal disturbances, so is the steadi- 
ness of the flow from Lake Erie to Niagara Falls 
seemingly uniform, warranting unusual care to insure 
uninterupted transmission of the power to those who 
will in the future demand their share of this great 
natural souce of power now for the first time to extend 
beyond a local use. 



The Hydraulic CanaL 

BY W. C. JOHNSON, C. E. 



A S the wateis of the Niagara River pass down 
-^^ through the Rapids and over the Falls they 
make a descent of about two hundred and fourteen 
feet in a distance of less than a mile. A force is thus 
generated equal to several milhons of- horse-power. 

One of the things that most naturally occurs to the 
thinking man is the possibilities of the employment of 
this energy in useful work. 

The simplest means of utilizing this force in a small 
way was by cutting canals along the river by the 
rapids above the Falls and discharging again into the 
river at a point a little distance below the intake. 

So it has happened that from the earliest times 
mills were built at various points along the rapids 
above the Falls. The first use of the power appears to 
have been for a saw-mill which was erected about 1725, 
to supply lumber for the use of Fort Niagara, and from 
time to time until the lands along the rapids were 
taken by the State of New York for a Reservation, mills 
of various sorts were built and supplied with power 
from this source. 



222 THE HYDRAULIC CANAL. 

Only a small amount of power could be obtained 
m this way, and the buildmg of mills in close prox- 
imity to the Falls w^as objectionable. 

In 1847 Augustus Porter outlined the plan on 
which the present Hydraulic canal is built. 

The circular issued by him at that time was ac- 
companied by a map showing the canal very much as 
it stands to-day. 

In 1842 negotiations were commenced with Caleb 
J. WoodhuU and Walter Bryant, and an agreement was 
finally reached with these gentlemen by which they 
were to construct a canal and w^ere to receive a right 
of way one hundred feet wide for this canal and 
a certain amount of land at its terminus. Ground 
was broken by them in 1853, and the work was carried 
on for about sixteen months. It "was then sus- 
pended for lack of funds, and nothing moie Avas done 
until 1858 when Stephen N. Allen took up the work 
and carried it forward for a time. After that, Horace 
H. Day took up the matter, and in 1861 completed a 
canal about thirty-five feet in width and about eight 
feet deep. 

The location of the entrance to this canal was most 
wisely chosen. Just before the river commences its 
rapid descent to the brink of the Falls, the last of the 
small islands have been passed and it stretches out 
calm and deep, and more than a mile in width. 

From this point the canal extends in the most 



THE HYDRAULIC CANAL. • 223 

direct line to the edge of the high bkiff below the Falls 
and by traversing a distance of forty-four hundred feet 
reaches a point where its water stands two hundred 
and fourteen feet above the water in the river below. 

Great as were the evident advantages of this canal 
as a source of power it happened, from various causes, 
that no mills were built to use the water from it until 
1870, when Mr. C. B. Gaskill built a small grist mill 
on the site of his present large and modern flouring 
mill. 

In 1875 the canal and all its appurtanences were 
purchased by Mr. Jacob F. Schoellkopf of Buffalo, who 
organized the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and 
Manufacturing Company, of which he is still the presi- 
dent. 

Since that time the building of mills upon its banks 
has gone steadily forward until there are at present four- 
teen large water wheels supplied with water from 
the canal, and the mills which they operate turn out 
about four thousand barrels of flour, and forty tons of 
paper every day, besides much other minor products 
and directly or indirectly afford employment for a 
large percentage of the population of the city of Nia- 
gara Falls. 

By the terms of the grant to the builders of this 
canal the land was conveyed to them only to the edge 
of the high bank, and the sloping bank below still re- 
mained in the hands of the original owners. 



224 .THE HYDRAULIC CANAL. 

This permitted the use of only about one-half the 
available head, but thi^ mattered little at that time, as 
no water-wheel maker would have dared to put his 
wheel under a head of more than one hundred feet. 
Mary were the failures of wheels in trying to use the 
hitherto unprecedented head of one hundred feet. 
All these difficulties have been overcome however. 

The title to the bank below has been acquired by the 
company owning the canal, and during the past year 
a large wood pulp mill has been built by the water's 
edge below the high bank, taking its supply from' 
the water which has heretofore been wasted from the 
mill above. The wheel which operates this mill is 
sixty inches in diameter, Avorks under a head of one 
hundred and twenty-five feet, and is probably develop- 
ing more power than any other single wheel in the 
world. 

The growth of the manufacturing industries at this 
point has been such as to very nearly exhaust the 
power of the canal as originally built by Mr. Day. 
With a view to providing themselves Avith a supply of 
power for future demands, the company, about a year 
ago, commenced an enlargement of the canal to a little 
more than double its original capacity. 

The enlargement now in progress is expected to 
be completed by the coming autumn, and will provide 
about thirty thousand horse-power. 

The right of way occupied by the Hydraulic Canal 



THE HYDRAULIC CANAL. 225 

is one hundred feet in width, and it is the intention 
of the owners to enlarge the canal until it occupies 
the entire right of way, and to deepen it sufficiently to 
supply on the aggregate about one hundred thousand 
horse-power. 

Power will, in the future, doubtless be developed 
by using the water under the full head of two hundred 
and fourteen feet. 

The bank of the river for about a mile below the 
present mills is owned by the company, and affords 
excellent sites for mills requiring large amounts of 
power. 

In addition to supplying power to these mills the 
lower bank offers a most excellent chance for the de- 
velopment of power to be transmitted to a distance by 
electricity or other means. 

For this latter purpose no more favorable place 
could well be imagined. 

A large volume of water is available where it can 
be used under a head of more than two hundred feet, 
and the wheels can be so placed that the gener- 
ators can be belted directly to them without the inter- 
vention of long and cumbersome shafts or drives. 

In power already developed and in possibilities of 
further development the plant of the Niagara Falls 
Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company de- 
serves to rank among the first of the great water 
powers of the world. 



ADVERTISEMENTS. 



flfll^OlJfiCEmEJ^T 



WE have, at great expense, established at Niagara 
Falls a coach system, in connection with our omni- 
bus and baggage business, a new departure in this line, con- 
ducted upon a business basis, and intended to reform and 
improve the methods in vogue here for so many years past. 
It is our intention to so conduct our business that it 
will not meet with adverse criticism, and that the public 
shall have no opportunity of questioning the manner or 
motives of our agents or employees. 

AT OUR GENERAL OFFICES all drivers are 
instructed to report before and after taking parties for a 
drive, and any complaint on the part of our patrons against 
the driver, for incivility, overcharge, or imposition of any 
kind, will be received and thoroughly investigated. We 
therefore advise our patrons to obtain at our general office, 
information regarding the different Points of Interest. We 
earnestly desire to build up our coach systen here on a 
foundation of honesty, business-like methods and fair deal- 
ing, that will obtain for us, wherever known, creditable 
reputation. 

Our agents, in uniform, are on all trains and at the 
railway station. They will inform travelers as to the time 
required and the cost for visiting all points of interest about 
the Falls and Whirlpool. 

Respectfully, 

THE MILLER & BRUNDAGE COACH CO., 

(LIMITED.) 



The Maid of the Mist. 



c o 

THOUSANDS of visitors at Niagara Falls have 
been heard to say, that It was only after a trip on 
this staunch and powerful boat that they became 
thoroughly Impressed with the novelty, beauty and 
grandeur of the Falls. The vast sweep of both Cata- 
racts from the American to the Canadian banks of 
the river, can be more fully comprehended as you 
steam by them on "The Maid of the Mist," than 
from any other vantage ground. 

The steamer leaves the foot of the Inclined 
Railway, Niagara Reservation, every half-hour, 
between 7 A. M. and 6.30 P. M., passing Ameri- 
can Falls, Cave of the Winds, Luna and Goat 
Islands, to the foot of the great Horseshoe Falls. 

Tickets, which can be procured at the foot of the 
Inclined Railway, or on board, entitle passengers 
to land in Canadian Free Park with the privilege of 
returning by boat any trip the same day. 

The fare for the entire trip, including the rubber 
clothing, is fifty cents. 

FRANK LeBLOND, 

Secretary and Manager. 



BPTTERY'S WHIRLPOOL RAPIDS 
AND DOUBLE ELEVATORS. 



T^HIS most charming and delightful spot about Niagara is situated about 100 
rods below the Railway Suspension Bridge. No visitor should leave Niagara 
without visiting this wonderfully grand and romantic place. Next to the Falls, the 
Whirlpool Rapids is the most important feature to be seen at Niagara. You have not 
seen Niagara until you have been there, and at no other point on the American side 
can any except a very distant view be obtained of the Rapids— bear this in mind. 
There is no point on the American side where this wonderfully grand view can be ob- 
tained except at Buttery's. Here you can have your photograph taken with the 
Rapids for a back ground, a souvenir of your visit to Niagara of permanent value 
and lasting beauty. Don't forget that Buttery's is the only Rapids on the 
American side, and positively the only point on the American or Canadian side 
where the whole sweep of the river can be seen with unbroken view from the Falls 
to the Whirlpool. 



Trolley Cars from Niagara Falls 
run direct to the entrance. 



Buttery Whirlpool Rapids Company, 

Proprietors. 



POST-OFFICE address: 

NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y. 



)liaga[a Blvei Liqi! 



STEEL STAMERS. 



IN CONNECTION WITH * * C H I CO R A ' * 

New York Central and "cibola," 
Michigan Central Railways, "cmippewa," 

AND NIAGARA FALLS PARK AND RIVER ELECTRIC ROAD. 

T^HE short and picturesque summer route between Bu£faIo, Niagara Falls and 
-*- Toronto. 

The only route giving passengers views of Niagara Falls, the Rapids, Whirlpool, 
Brock's Monument and all the beautiful scenery of the lower Niagara. 

Tourists can leave Niagara Falls in the morning— have the delightful trip of seven 
miles down the river and 30 across Lake Ontario— spend six hours in Toronto, the 
Queen City of Canada, and be back at the Falls for dinner. No visitor to the Falls 
should fail to take in this trip.— Tickets and all information can be had at offices of 
the various railways and hotels at Niagara Falls. 

JOHN FOY, TORONTO, Manager. 



HILL BROTHERS, 



BUFFALO & NIAGARA FALLS 



REAL ESTATE, 



122 PEARL STREET, 



Sr;i.^Ar'- BUFFALO, N. Y. 

Thomas HiH, Jr. 



NIAGARA SPOONS. 






These spoons, which 
are made in ster- 
ling silver only, 
are for sale by 
all the leading 
dealers at Niagara' 
Falls, and by W. H. 
Glenny, Sons & C 

uffalo, N. Y. 
whom they are de 
igned and controlled. 
The dies are very finely 
cut, 
out 

figure of the Indian brave . 
supporting a lacrosse stick 
shaped panel is especially 
good. Illustrated price-lists 
by mail on application. 
Coffee spoons, tea 
spoon s, orange 
spoons, sugar/ 



the pattern standing 1 1/;^ 
in high relief. The Vi^ 




etc. 




TOURISTS TO NIAGARA, COM- 
MERCIAL MEN AND CYCLISTS 
CONSULT CONVENIENCE, 
ECONOMY AND COMFORT BY 
PUTTING UP IN BUFFALO AND 
RUNNING BY RAIL, RIVER OR 
ROAD TO THE FALLS FOR 
THE DAY. WHEN IN BUFFALO 
STOP AT THE GENESEE— A 
QUIETLY ELEGANT HOTEL AT 
THE JUNCTION OF THE BUSI- 
NESS AND RESIDENCE POR- 
TIONS OF THE CITY. NIAGARA 
FALLS FORTY MINUTES AWAY. 



NEW KENT HOUSE AND COTTAGES. 

lAKEWOOD (ON LAKE CHAUTAUQUA), N. L 




The New Kent House is scarcely three (3) hours' ride from Buffalo. 

The hotel is located on rising ground, in one of the most healthful and beau- 
tiful inland retreats in America. A ride of less than four hours from Niagara Falls. 
A constantly moving line of steamers keeps it in communication with Chautauqua, 
the summer Athens of America, only a few minutes' ride away, and the provision for 
out-door sport and recreation is unlimited. 

The table is a feature of the New Kent House, its appointments and service 
being unexcelled on Lake Chautauqua. 

The house is abundantly supplied with pure spring water, and its sanitation and. 
ventilation are perfect. 

An orchestra of sixteen musicians plays each evening. 

Of the Mosquito which is the pest of so many summer resorts, it may be truth- 
fully said that it is conspicuous by its entire absence from Lakewood. 

OPENS JUNE 15. 

For terms and further information, apply to 

MR. HORACE FOX, MANAGER. 

Formerly of the Grand Hotel, Point Chautauqua, N. Y. 



Mr. Fox is also the manager of the Niagara Hotel Buffalo, the only first-class 
hotel away from the business section of the city. It is the hotel preferred by William 
Dean Howells, Julia Marlowe, the Kendalls, and many other prominent people on 
account of its agreeable location on Porter Avenue, one of the Park thoroughfares and 
its perfect appointments throughout. It is at the same time one of the unique hotels 
of the counti-y. With its large palmery, its broad verandas, and outlook upon 
Niagara River, old Fort Porter and the Front (a portion of the city's Park system), 
it amply repays a visit from any one, if only to see a hotel that is delightfully novel. 



€fic Slltlantic 

contains the best Stories, 
Essays, Poems, and Pa- 
p.^rs on Questions of the 
Day, by such Writers as 

CARL SCHURZ, 

JOHN FISKE, 

AGNES REPPLIER, 

Mrs. DELAND, 

HENRY JAMES, 

DR. HOLMES, 

E. C. STEDMAN, 

T. B. ALDRICH, 

SARAH ORNEJEWETT, 

OCTAVE THANET, 

E. E. HALE, 

F. MARION CRAWFORD, 

ARTHUR S. HARDY, 

FRANCIS PARKMAN, 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 

Mrs. WIGGIN, . 

Mrs. CATHERWOOD, 

And Others. 



Cpt Atlantic 

Edited by 

Horace E. Scudder. 

Terms : M-OO a year, postage Up^ 
single numbers, 3S cents. Wi 
life-size portrait of Emerson, 
Longfellow, Bryant, Whit- 
tier, Lowell, Holmts, or 
Hawthorne, $L00 
each, addi- 
tional. 

Always fresh, loigh-iotied , suggestive. . . . 
Its serials are of the highest literary merit, 
and pure aud tvholesome in moral tone. Its 
poetry is conjes>edly unequal ed by that to he 
found in any other periodical in the country. 
Its historical papers, educational articles, es- 
says, and hook reviews are invariahly of the 
very highest merit and excellence. Indeed, these 
are the qualities that characterise the whole 
magazine. — Pennsylvania School Journal. 

The Atlantic Monthly ought not to he read 
with the rapidity and incurious interest that 
we waste on most magazines and journals, hut 
carefully and leisuieiy, as we read the hest 
hooks. — Mail and Express (New York). 

History, romance, literature, poetry , biog- 
raphy , and criticism are admirably presented. 
The diction is of a high order, the philosophy 
is sound, and the treatment progressive. — 
Providence Journal. 

The Atlantic Monthly is, as usual, the hest 
of the magazines. Its contents always have a 
daintiness . . . that none of the others are 



able to equal. — Chicago Journal. 
Postal Notes and Money are at the risk of the sender, and therefore remittances 
should be made by money-order , draft, or registered letter to the Publishers, 

4 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 



SKASON OK 1894 



GOMPMl 




GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY LINE. 

Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Sault Ste. Marie, West Superior & Duluth. 




THIS Company is now building the first two of a fleet of large 
passenger steamships for service on the Great Lakes. They 
will be 386 feet long, 44 feet beam, and will have twin screws, 
quadruple expansion engines, non-explosive Belleville boilers, of 7,000 
horse power, and a speed exceeding 20 miles an hour ; every modern 
improvement. 

Connection at DULUTH will be made with the GREAT 
NORTHERN RAILWAY for ST. PAUL, MINNEAPOLIS, and the 
PACIFIC COAST, forming a most attractive 

"TRANS-CONTINENTAL ROUTE." 



steamer connection at SAULT STE. MARIE for MACKINAW 
ISLAND and CHICAGO. 

Information can be obtained from the undersigned. 

T. P. CARPENTER, 
JOHN GORDON, Gen. Pass. Agent, 

General Manager. 60 Main St., BUFFALO, N. Y. 



TheWENBORNE-SUMNER CO. 
ART 




BOOK . 

JOB y House, 

133-137 Main St,, Buffalo, N, Y, 

J/f/'E solicit the patronage of parties who appreciate 
^^ such a standard of zvork as must result from a 
combination of 

MOST SKILLED LABOR, 
CA REFUL S UP ERIN TENDENCE, 
MOST PERFECT MA CHINER V, 
HIGH GRADE OF MA TERIALS. 

P VER V order, large or small, receives the personal 
^—^ attention of members of the firm. 

,,, r .J ORNAMENTAL DESIGNS 
We furnish 
at the lowest prices lor Book Lovers, 

consistent with Stationery, 



artistic execution 



Show Cards, etc. 



Halftone Engravings, 
ILL US TRA TIONS ■ Wood-cuts, 

FOR ALL PURPOSES: Wax- engravings. 

Photo-zinc Etchings. 

COLOR WORK A SPECIALTY. 

T'-WENBORNE-SUMNER CO. 

135-137 MAIN ST., BUFFALO, N. Y. 



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